Use Your Common Sense Day

Sources

• Oklahoma State Senate, Oklahoma Statutes Title 25, Definitions and General Provisions — https://oksenate.gov/sites/default/files/2019-12/os25.pdf → 25 O.S. section 86, "Will Rogers Day," verbatim, enacted Laws 1947; 25 O.S. section 82.2 listing Will Rogers Day on November 4 and providing that acts may be performed on it as on any business day; 25 O.S. section 82.1, the paid-closing holiday list, which omits Will Rogers Day
• Oklahoma Historical Society, Douglas Watson, "Rogers, William Penn Adair," The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture — https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=RO021 → born November 4, 1879 near Oologah in Indian Territory; Ziegfeld from 1915; weekly column from 1922 and daily telegram after 1926; seventy-one films; death August 15, 1935 near Barrow with Wiley Post
• Will Rogers Memorial Museum, The Life of Will Rogers — https://www.willrogers.com/back-stage-research-archives → "born on election day, November 4, 1879"; his father a Cherokee senator and judge; Ziegfeld signing 1915 and Broadway stardom by 1918; the August 15, 1935 crash shortly after takeoff; the Memorial dedicated November 4, 1938 with a Franklin Roosevelt radio tribute
• Will Rogers Memorial Museum, Writings — https://www.willrogers.com/writings → "over 3,600 newspaper columns" and approximately two million published words in sixteen years; the Daily Telegrams in the New York Times from July 1926 to August 1935; free PDFs of the complete Oklahoma State University Press editions
• Will Rogers Memorial Museum, Will's Quotes — https://www.willrogers.com/quotes → "Some quotes attributed to Will Rogers are falsely credited"; the museum's curated, dated quotations include no common-sense line
• James M. Smallwood and Steven K. Gragert, eds., Will Rogers' Weekly Articles, Volume 1: The Harding/Coolidge Years 1922–1925 (Oklahoma State University Press, 1978), PDF hosted by the Will Rogers Memorial Museum — https://www.willrogers.com/_files/ugd/eb96bb_123120e7c8dd4f0788e027d745d40df1.pdf → the McNaught Syndicate and the first column in the New York Times on December 24, 1922; the 1924 article "Parties Hunting for an Issue" containing "Common Sense is not an issue in politics, it's an affliction"
• James M. Smallwood and Steven K. Gragert, eds., Will Rogers' Daily Telegrams (Oklahoma State University Press), PDF hosted by the Will Rogers Memorial Museum — https://www.willrogers.com/_files/ugd/eb96bb_eb05a6d876494af680c3c74d39ea4e76.pdf → the complete daily telegrams, 1926–1935, searched for the attributed common-sense phrase with no occurrence
• Library of Congress, Chronicling America — https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/ → no occurrences of "common sense ain't common," "no trick to being a humorist" or "the whole government working for you" in the digitized newspaper archive, against 142 pages for his own tagline "all I know is just what I read in the papers"
• Library of Congress, New-York Tribune, June 1, 1878, p. 4 — https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn83030214/1878-06-01/ed-1/?sp=4 → "common sense is not so common" in print a year before Rogers was born
• Library of Congress, The Eureka Mirror (Eureka, Montana), September 22, 1932, p. 2 — https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn85053106/1932-09-22/ed-1/?sp=2 → his weekly column as published in a small-town paper, under a Beverly Hills dateline
• Oklahoma Historical Society, Plan Your Visit: Will Rogers Memorial Museum — https://www.okhistory.org/sites/visit-will-rogers → open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. from March 1 through November 10; address and admission; operated by the Oklahoma Historical Society
• Oklahoma Historical Society, press release, October 15, 2019 — https://www.okhistory.org/about/pressrelease?id=1079 → the November 4 birthday celebration in Claremore; the Birthplace Ranch at Oologah and its free admission; both sites as divisions of the Oklahoma Historical Society
• Oklahoma Historical Society, Will Rogers Days and Motion Picture Festival — https://www.okhistory.org/calendar/event/will-rogers-days-and-motion-picture-festival/all/ → Claremore has celebrated the birthday since the Memorial opened in 1938
• Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, One Life: Will Rogers — https://npg.si.edu/exhibition/one-life-will-rogers → 1879–1935; born to a prominent Cherokee family in Indian Territory; a prolific political commentator
• California State Parks, FAQs: Reopening of Will Rogers State Historic Park — https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=31958 → the thirty-one-room ranch house and stables destroyed in the Palisades Fire of January 7, 2025; horses and more than 150 artifacts including his typewriter evacuated; limited reopening from November 8, 2025, with the house gone

Notes on sourcing. The aggregator claims about this observance's founder are described in the text but cited nowhere as evidence; nationaltoday, daysoftheyear and timeanddate were read only to characterize what circulates. On the number of papers carrying his column, the Oklahoma Historical Society says more than five hundred and the scholarly editors say approximately six hundred; the page says "hundreds" rather than averaging. On the column count, the Memorial Museum's "over 3,600" is followed over the National Portrait Gallery's "four thousand," because the museum holds the writings. The quotation finding is a negative, and it is stated as such: he also spoke on stage, on radio and in interviews, which the published columns do not capture, so the claim here is that the line cannot be sourced to his published writing or to any digitized newspaper of record — not that he provably never said it. No Oklahoma gubernatorial proclamation is claimed, because the statute is self-executing and none was found. Rejected as sources: nationaltoday, nationaldaycalendar, checkiday, timeanddate, daysoftheyear, quote-aggregator sites and content farms.