Across the globe, people are celebrating Towel Day today! If you don’t know what Towel Day is, you have not read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Don’t panic though, there is still time to embrace inner nerd and spend sometime hitchhiking through Douglas Adams’ galaxy.
So what is Towel Day? According to TowelDay.org: “Towel Day is an annual celebration on the 25th of May, as a tribute to the late author Douglas Adams (1952-2001). On that day, fans around the universe carry a towel in his honour.”
We know, we know — you are asking why towels? Here’s why:
“A towel, [The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.” ~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy