January 18 Holidays

Martin Luther King Day is the U.S. federal holiday observed on the third Monday of January, honoring the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — the civil rights leader whose nonviolent activism and “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington accelerated the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. National Gourmet Coffee Day celebrates specialty coffee — the single-origin, direct-trade, and micro-roasted beans whose Specialty Coffee Association quality scoring distinguishes them from commodity coffee. National Thesaurus Day marks January 18, 1779, the birthday of Peter Mark Roget, who published Roget’s Thesaurus in 1852 — organizing 15,000 words by meaning rather than alphabetically. Winnie the Pooh Day marks January 18, 1882, the birthday of A.A. Milne — creator of Winnie-the-Pooh, inspired by his son’s stuffed bear named after a real Canadian bear at the London Zoo.