May the Forth be with you!

Happy Star Wars Day everybody!

What?  Don’t act so surprised!  Yes, this is primarily an Automotive Industry Informational blog site but we DO have a “For the fun of it” category for a reason (you might remember our post a few month back on the Super Bowl commercials)!

Today is the 4th of May, which is the unofficial, International Star Wars Day.  So, a lot of the geeky/nerdy crowd out there is already aware of this.  However, there are a few people out there (such as my wonderful girlfriend) who had no idea that this was not only a “thing” but has been for quite a while.  Keeping with the spirit of being an informational blog site, let’s give a little background (courtesy of wikipedia.org; my high school English teachers would not approve!) on what it is, how it got started and how best to celebrate!

The date, “May the 4th”, was chosen as Star Wars Day because of how similar it sounds to the phrase “May the Force be with you”.  As the title of this blog reads, don’t be surprised if your geekier friends and family members great you with a hearty “May the Forth Be With You!” throughout the day.  There are 364 other days a year for them to be normal, so let’s let them have this one.  Anyways, from what can be gathered through our extensive research (still, just on Wikipedia.org) “the reference was first used on May 4, 1979 when Margaret Thatcher’s political party placed an advertisement in the London Evening New following her taking office as Prime Minister that stated ‘May the Fourth Be with  You, Maggie.  Congratulations.’ (a little before my time, so I’m just going to have to take their word for it).”  The first organized celebration of Star Wars Day took place in 2011 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with all sorts of festivities from trivia game shows to costume contests and more.  Traditionally, (nerdy) people will get together and watch the Star Wars movies collectively, though usually it is the original Trilogy (Episodes VI, V & VI) occasionally all six (current) movies are played either in the order they were released or in episodic order.  With the news the past few months about Disney working on a 7th Star Wars film, I would be very surprised if they didn’t do something pretty big and fun today to help spread the word!

So, that’s pretty much why your Facebook and Twitter feeds are blowing up with your nerdy and geeky friends going on and on about today being May the 4th.  Your welcome!

Thanks for reading everyone, and May the Forth be with you all!

Sincerely,

Jason Lee Gibson
Your Automotive Digital Informant
Autostar USA