News Summary

• Monday, March 16, 2026, is National Panda Day.
• It is also Curlew Day, National Artichoke Heart Day, and St. Urho’s Day, a confected holiday.
• The day was created by Richard Mattson, a worker at Ketola's Department Store in Virginia, Minnesota, in the spring of 1956.
• The legend originally said that St.Urho expelled frogs from ancient Finland, in order to save the grape crops, and thus the jobs of vineyard workers.
• Later the legend was changed—possibly by Sulo Havumaki, a psychology professor of Bemidji, Minnesota— to say that Urho had expelled grasshoppers, not frogs.