Ed Balls Day: The Story of an Immortalized Twitter Fail

— -- Ed Balls. The name may not mean a lot to an American audience but over the pond, it is a name celebrated every year in 140 characters or fewer –- 133 fewer to be precise.

Every year, British Twitter users celebrate April 28 as the unofficial holiday of "Ed Balls Day."

It all started five years ago. Ed Balls, who was the finance chief for the opposition Labour Party at the time, tweeted out his own name: Ed Balls. It was his first tweet, and one that immediately sparked a meme.

The post has so far been retweeted more than 70,000 times and has received more than 37,000 likes. The story behind the famous tweet is that Balls’ aides had encouraged him to search for his own name on Twitter to see what people were writing about him. When he tried to follow their advice, he accidentally tweeted out his name instead of searching for it.

Since then, the Twitter fail has been celebrated every year. Today, Google said that interest in Ed Balls increased more than 2,500 percent.

The hashtag #EdBallsDay has been trending on Twitter in the UK and people have tweeted out thousands of jokes about the five-year old mistake.

Some even celebrate the day ahead of time.

Balls himself, now a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, celebrates the day as well.

Likewise his wife, Yvette Cooper, a member of Parliament for the Labour Party, honors the day.

But last year, she almost forgot.