"Arrrr matey, today be not just another day!" Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day according to Chases 2007 Calendar of Events and an email received by a coworker from an excited friend. If you have ever wanted to be like Johnny Depp or longed to be Captain Jack Sparrow, today is your day!

Pirates, always an easy choice for a Halloween costume and for carrying off the heroine of a romance novel, have achieved a new level of popularity thanks in part to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Surprisingly, International Talk Like a Pirate Day got its start in the 1990s. They have an official website which will give you an idea of how into this people can get! There is a dictionary associated with this website which will help you to impress people with your pirate lingo and help you figure out what other people are saying to you.

Talk Like a Pirate Day gained even more popularity in 2002 when humorist Dave Barry wrote a column about it in the Miami Herald. He discussed the very beginning of the observation of the day. He also profiled its two creators , "Ol Chumbucket" and "Capn Slappy"; two otherwise normal people who decided to dress and talk like pirates one day a year. Thanks in part to this column and the dedication of John Baur and Mark Summers, people in more and more countries around the globe are beginning to be very excited about eyepatches and words like "avast" and "me hearties", at least one day a year.

If you have ever wanted to know more about pirates, the real pirates I mean, the library has some books which you might want to take a look at.

The republic of pirates by Colin Woodard : a new book all about the pirates of the Caribbean
The sack of Panama by Peter Earle : Capn Morgan did more than advertise rum
A history of pirates : blood and thunder on the high seas by Nigel Cawthorne
The book of pirate songs compiled by Stuart M Frank : If you'd rather sing like a pirate than talk like one
Under the black flag: the romance and reality of life among the pirates by David Cordingly : Just in case you are curious about what life was really like.

Of course if you'd rather just look at Johnny Depp (aka Capn Jack Sparrow), we do have Pirates of the Caribbean : the curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man's Chest

So if you missed it today, enjoy your grog, round up your parrot and your eyepatch and just wait for next year! Arrrrr!