More Military History – 10 November 2009 – National Donut Day!

Aside from being the birthday of the United States Marine Corps, 10 November 2009 is also National Donut day

What’s that?  You’ve not heard about National Donut Day ???  Well, I can’t say I really blame you – I just found out about it myself   It was started back in 1969 by a Marine (how appropriate!) who was a POW at Son Tay Prison in North Vietnam and even he’d forgotten about it for a while.

From the U.S. Naval Institute blog:

…The interrogator began by bragging about his country and its 4,000 year history and belittling the USA… saying, “Your country is very young, it doesn’t even have very many heroes or holidays.” Knowing that the Marine Corps birthday was coming up on November the 10, Orson began to spin a story…….

He pretended to take umbrage, saying… “No, no, no…. you are quite wrong… we have many holidays in our country, as a matter of fact, one is coming up very soon. There will be festivals and children will dress up in costumes and it’s very important to us.” The interrogator became interested so Orson proceeded that it was called, “National Donut Day”….

You really should go read the whole thing – it’s a feel good story from a time when these guys didn’t have much to feel all that good about

I guess I’ll just have to celebrate a day late this year