“They call it Stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad. Lord, and Wednesday’s worse, and Thursday’s all so sad. The eagle flies on Friday and Saturday, and I go out to play. Sunday I go to church, gonna kneel me down and pray.”
— “Stormy Monday,” T-Bone Walker
Songwriters complain about Mondays quite a bit.
“Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down” — The Carpenters.
“I Don’t Like Mondays” — The Boomtown Rats.
“Monday, Monday, Can’t Trust That Day” — The Mamas and the Papas.
But I’m convinced Tuesdays are worse.
As you may or may not know, the days of the week are named after celestial bodies: Sun Day, Moon Day, Mars Day, Mercury Day, Jupiter Day, Venus Day, and Saturn Day.
English incorporates a bit of Norse mythology into the mix, converting Tuesday into Tyr’s Day (after the Norse god of war), Wednesday into Odin’s Day, Thursday into Thor’s Day (after Chris Hemsworth, apparently), and Friday into Freya’s Day, named for the Norse goddess of love. Sunday, Monday, and Saturday still refer directly to their respective celestial bodies.
Let’s focus on Tuesday — or Mardi in French, which gives us Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday.
Comparative mythology suggests Mars the god (not to be confused with Charlemagne tha God) is a mythological descendant of Perkwunos, a Proto-Indo-European weather deity also known as “The Striker” or “Lord of Oaks.”
An association between bad weather and Tuesday tragedies apparently began long before anyone had a calendar. Recently translated papyrus scrolls suggest the Great Flood may have started on a Tuesday:
“Creatures arrived two by two, uh huh, uh huh. Creatures arrived two by two, uh huh, uh huh. Yes, they arrived two by two, the elephant and the kangaroo, and they came aboard, now safe from all the rain.”
But not all Tuesday stories had happy endings.
On Tuesday, April 15, 1856, a group of Americans arrived in Panama City — the one in Panama, not Florida. A man named Jack Oliver took a slice of watermelon from a fruit vendor and refused to pay for it. A verbal altercation escalated into a full-scale riot that resulted in the deaths of 15 Americans and two Panamanians.
As Winston Churchill never actually said about that incident, never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
On Tuesday, Jan. 15, 1919, a storage tank containing 2.3 million gallons of molasses burst in Boston. A wave of molasses traveling at an estimated 35 mph swept through the streets, killing 21 people.
Sticky.
On Tuesday, June 1, 1943, BOAC Flight 777 crashed, killing all 17 people aboard, including actor Leslie Howard, best known as Ashley Wilkes in “Gone With the Wind.”
Then came Tuesday, Feb. 3, 1959, now remembered as “The Day the Music Died.”
Most of you know the story. Waylon Jennings famously gave up his seat aboard a Beechcraft Bonanza — also known as the Fork-Tailed Doctor Killer — to J.P. Richardson, better known as The Big Bopper, as musicians traveled to a show in Minnesota.
The plane crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa, killing Richardson, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and 21-year-old pilot Roger Peterson. It took two hours to recover Peterson’s body from the wreckage.
Not far away, in Des Moines, Iowa, Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a live bat on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 1982. He spent the following weeks getting rabies shots.
You won’t catch me north of the Mason-Dixon Line in the winter.
Speaking of the Mason-Dixon Line, Elvis Presley — born on Tuesday, Jan. 8, 1935 — also died on a Tuesday, Aug. 16, 1977, at age 42.
The man whom President Jimmy Carter said “permanently changed the face of American popular culture” was found dead on a bathroom floor.
It just ain’t fair.
I have friends who believe she has had a positive impact on American culture, but I would suggest Taylor Swift, born Tuesday, Dec. 13, 1989, ranks somewhere between The Three Stooges and Joey Bishop on any list of cultural influence.
But as of Tuesday, June 9, 2026, I have reached the conclusion that the worst Tuesday of all may have been Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016 — the day we first started using the phrase “President Trump.”
It has been exhausting.
Selah.