It turns out you can learn something new from those Twitter trending topics. For those of you wondering, and don’t act like you were all so cool to know, Towel Day isn’t an ode to pool season. But, we should definitely be glad it has begun.
Towel Day is a celebration of Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The author died at the age of 49 from a heart attack on May 11, 2001. Just two weeks later, his fans initiated Towel Day, because Adams, believed the towel was vital.
Here’s an excerpt from the book:
A towel, it 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 vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-tohand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a bush, but very ravenous); 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.
