I was surfing around looking for information on the world famous Oktoberfest in Germany and stumbled across this site: http://www.munich-oktoberfest.net. Heaps of good information here like accommodations, history, statistics, songs sung, maps of the event and quite a bit more. I dropped in a few snippets from the history section below as it's pretty interesting.

The whole deal started in 1810 when Prince Ludwig of Bavaria married Princess Therese of Saxony. They celebrated the wedding with a horse race outside the city and something like 40,000 showed up for the party. The Prince even got Munich breweries to create a special beer for the event.

The first beer tents arrived in 1896. On the first Saturday of the event, there's a traditional parade which ends in the ceremonial tapping of the first keg. Since its inception, it's only been cancelled 24 times...and for pretty good reasons...things like cholera outbreaks and war. Go figure.

A large portion of the festival is held in September because back in the 15th century, beer was not brewed in the summer months as those batches rarely turned out well. The last batches, made in March, were made with higher ABVs to preserve the brew and traditionally the fest commenced on the last Saturday in September until the First Sunday in October so all could drink up the old stocks and make room for the new which would be made after harvest.

Count me in!