May 14, 2021 – National Underground America Day | National Dance Like A Chicken Day

Did You Know There’s A Whole World Right Underneath Your Feet?

Welcome to May 14th, 2021 on the National Day Calendar. Today we celebrate living like a prairie dog and dancing like poultry. 

The small town of Coober Peddy, Australia produces more opal than any other place on Earth. It’s also unique for another reason: Over half of its residents live underground. When the town was established in the early 1900s, miners flocked to the area to mine this precious gem, but found the climate to be too harsh. Temperatures during the summer are consistently over 100 degrees and there is little to no vegetation. The solution was to dig into the earth to create homes for themselves. And those dwellings are still used today. While the sun beats down on the desert outside, the dugouts as they’re called stay a comfortable 70 degrees year round. On National Underground America Day, check out the world that’s lurking, right beneath your feet.

As soon as you hear the upbeat Oom-Pah-Pah of the Chicken Dance song, you know what happens next.  Everyone heads to the dance floor and spends the next few minutes dancing in unison.  Since it debuted in the 1950s, this silly little song has become a mainstay at wedding and Oktoberfest celebrations.  In 1996, fans of the song took things to the extreme, setting the record for world’s largest Chicken Dance.  72,000 people were all flapping their arms and shaking their tail feathers at once.  On National Dance Like A Chicken Day, shake things up by pretending to be poultry.   

I’m Anna Devere and I’m Marlo Anderson.  Thanks for joining us as we Celebrate Every Day.


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