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Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is an American historian and Harvard professor who wrote these words in a 1976 academic paper about Puritan funeral sermons — not as a rallying cry, but as a dry scholarly observation about which women got recorded in history and why. She had no idea the line would escape the footnotes. It appeared on a bumper sticker in the 1990s, spread globally, and became one of the most quoted feminist statements of the modern era. Ulrich herself was bemused by this — she went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for her book A Midwife's Tale, which was, appropriately, about recovering the history of women who were too busy being well-behaved to be remembered.

Disobedience Day, landing on the eve of Independence Day, is perfectly placed. American independence was, after all, an act of disobedience — against the most powerful empire in the world, by people who decided that well-behaved colonists would never make history. Ulrich's line makes the same point with different names in every era: the women who got into good trouble, who refused to sit at the back, who marched when they were told to stay home, who published when they were told to be quiet. National Eat Beans Day — humble, unpretentious, nourishing — makes an endearing companion to this: not every act of significance has to be grand. Sometimes it's just showing up, making noise, and eating your vegetables.