Talk Like a Pirate Day 2011: Arrr! It All Started in a Racquetball Game

Today is the day to talk like a pirate, if you like, since it's officially Talk Like a Pirate Day. The parodic holiday was created in 1995 by John Baur and Mark Summers who proclaimed that each year on Sept. 19 people should talk like a pirate.

Both Twitter and Facebook are lighting up today with pirate talk in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day 2011. It's trending on Twitter, some are talking like pirates at work, and the national holiday gets bigger and bigger each year.

Fans can visit the founders Web site at talklikeapirate.com, getting Pirate advice from Cap'n Slappy and more. Also, fans can find the Cap'n on Twitter as thecapnslappy.

The idea for Talk Like a Pirate Day came about after Summers and Baur were playing racquetball and one of the exclaimed during the game with, Arrr! and the concept was created. In 2002, the friends sent a letter about their concocted national day to syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry who liked the idea and promoted the day and growing media converged and spread through social media has helped build the hype in the annual event.

A Web site hosted by Baur and Summers explains, How it all started...

Once upon a time -- on June 6, 1995, to be precise -- we were playing racquetball, not well but gamely. It wasn't our intention to become 'the pirate guys.' Truth to tell, it wasn't really our intention to become anything, except perhaps a tad thinner and healthier, and if you could see our photos, you'd know how THAT turned out. As we flailed away, we called out friendly encouragement to each other -- Damn, you b------d! and Oh, jeez, my hamstring! for instance -- as shots caromed away, unimpeded by our wildly swung racquet's.

Who knows? It might have happened exactly that way. Anyway, whoever let out the first Arrr! started something. One thing led to another.

The friends say they needed a date for their self-proclaimed holiday, and Mark came up with September 19.

They explain how they celebrated Talk Like a Pirate Day pretty much on their own for the first seven years until they decided to approach Barry.

We had a national holiday that almost nobody knew about, and we were content with that, Baur and Summers explain.

But after they approached Barry in 2002, the rest became history, as hell broke loose after the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist wrote about it.