The only national day anywhere named for a character in a novel. Ulysses takes place on one Dublin day (Thursday, 16 June 1904) and every 16 June since 1954 people have walked the book's route through the city, in Edwardian hats, reading it aloud.
Joyce set the whole of Ulysses on 16 June 1904 because it was the day of his first outing with Nora Barnacle, the Galway woman he would spend his life with. Leopold Bloom, the book's wandering advertising canvasser, gives the day its name. Joyce himself knew of the custom: a letter of June 1924 mentions 'a group of people who observe what they call Bloom's day'.
The first Bloomsday proper was the fiftieth anniversary, in 1954. John Ryan, the artist and publican who ran Envoy magazine, and the novelist Brian O'Nolan, Flann O'Brien, organised a day-long pilgrimage along the route of the novel in two horse-drawn cabs, with Patrick Kavanagh, Anthony Cronin, A. J. Leventhal and Joyce's cousin Tom, each assigned a character. They began at the Martello tower at Sandycove, where the book begins, and got about halfway before drink and temper ended it in Ryan's pub, the Bailey. He later installed the front door of 7 Eccles Street, Bloom's house, there, having saved it from demolition.
The Bloomsday Festival, run by the James Joyce Centre for the city, has been held every year since 1994 across the week of the 16th: readings, dramatisations, walks and breakfasts. For the centenary in 2004, ten thousand people were given a free full Irish breakfast on O'Connell Street. In 1982, Joyce's own centenary, RTÉ broadcast the entire text of Ulysses on radio, continuously, over thirty hours.
A celebration of James Joyce held every 16 June, the day on which his novel Ulysses is set. It is named for Leopold Bloom, the book's central character. Dubliners and visitors follow the route of the novel through the city, in Edwardian dress, reading from it.
Because Joyce set Ulysses on Thursday, 16 June 1904 — the day of his first outing with Nora Barnacle, who became his wife.
1954, the fiftieth anniversary, when John Ryan and Flann O'Brien led a party including Patrick Kavanagh along the route of the novel in horse-drawn cabs. They got halfway before the pubs intervened.
No, and most people have not. The day is a celebration of Joyce and of Dublin; the book is long, the breakfast is not.