Fun Holiday – Nothing Day

Started by newspaper columnist Harold Pullman Coffin in 1973, the unofficial holiday aims to provide people “with a day where they can just sit without celebrating, observing, or honoring anything."

An Un-Event

The day is an "un-event", which means that it should not be seen as an event and that one should do nothing to promote it as such.

So instead of promoting the day, we will tell you more about nothing. Nothing is an indefinite pronoun that means no thing or not anything. It refers to a person or a thing of no importance, consequence, or interest.

Debates Over Nothing

History is full of debates between philosophers and writers on the importance and the study of nothing. Some philosophers believe that the study of the nature of nothing is a useless endeavor since there is nothing like nothing - to answer the question, what is nothing, one must find nothing.

There is also some disagreement among physicists about the true nature of nothingness in outer space. Many claim that even a true vacuum, devoid of anything is not nothing, because even if it doesn't have any particles of gravity, it contains quantum particles.

How to Celebrate?

• Observe Nothing Day by celebrating nothing.
• Learn facts about absolutely nothing.
• Learn more about how the notion of nothingness features in philosophy and science.
• Watch the Seinfeld episode, The Pitch. In this episode of the popular TV series, George Costanza comes up with the idea of creating a TV show about nothing.

Did You Know…

…that zero as a number was discovered in India in the 9th century AD?