National Hot Tub Day

The Jacuzzis were seven brothers who emigrated from Italy to California in the early 1900s. They were engineers, and their first work was in the air, including a pitched propeller for the American government and an enclosed cabin monoplane that carried mail for the postal service.

Then one job became personal. Candido Jacuzzi's toddler son Kenneth had rheumatoid arthritis and was receiving hydrotherapy at a hospital. In the 1940s Candido built a pump so the treatment could continue at home.

Kenneth, quoted years later in People Weekly, said that as good Italian parents do, his folks thought more is better. What came of it was the J-300, a portable pump you dropped into an ordinary bathtub. The family began marketing it to hospitals and schools in 1956.

California in the 1970s was the right launching ground, and by the middle of the decade owning a Jacuzzi had become a mark of the mellow local lifestyle. Candido, the conservative inventor of the original pump, was reportedly embarrassed by the indulgent associations his device had picked up.

Regulators were watching the same boom. In a warning issued at the end of December 1979, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said that using hot tubs above normal body temperature can cause drowsiness, which may lead to unconsciousness and then to drowning. The Commission said it had been informed of 10 deaths recorded so far that year.

The rules that followed were written by the industry rather than imposed on it. The CPSC said its staff was working with two trade bodies in Santa Ana, California, as they drafted voluntary safety standards, and mandatory federal requirements did not arrive until 2007. The holiday now sitting on the calendar for all of this has no such paper trail, and no founder for it has ever been documented.