Why celebrate on the 25th of May instead of a more meaningful date?
Many other dates for celebrations had been proposed. For those with an exceptionally long attention span: the 42nd day of the year (“Happy Adams Day”), 42 days after his death (“Second Day of Remembering”), the 11th of March (his birthday, around which from 2003 on a yearly “Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture” is held), the last Friday of every May, the Friday before the 42nd week-end day of the year (occasionally falls on 25 May, as it did the year he died), etc. Of all these dates, the 25th of May turned out to be the one that gained a significant following. As the universe that Douglas Adams created was full of absurdity and randomness, it may be a fitting choice after all. And if you need an additional reason: if you add the hexadecimal numbers 25 and 5, and convert the result to decimal, you get 42!
