YEREVAN – The International Hug Day will be celebrated in Armenia on Wednesday. People will come out to streets with posters reading “Let me hug you”, “Free hugs”, “Hugging and smiling is free”, posted Facebook user Davit Avetisyan.

To note, Hug Day is usually celebrated from the beginning of July until the end of August. Free hugs are a real life story of Juan Mann, who then suffered difficult moments of life. Once he arrived at the airport of his hometown and found out that nobody was going to meet him. He was upset. He wanted to hug someone so much that took a marker and a piece of paper and wrote two simple words on it “Free Hugs”.

He was standing all alone when an old woman came up to him and said that she also was lonely and wanted to hug someone. They hugged and he smiled maybe for the first time in the past days. Juan then started to hug hundreds of people and with every hug they became more and more happy. Later the authorities of Sydney prohibited Juan to hug people and demanded a medical insurance costing $25 million. He started collecting signatures and when he already had about 10,000 supporters, the authorities removed the ban and he continued to hug people for free.