Memorial Day

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who died in our nation's service. The preferred name for the holiday gradually changed from "Decoration Day" to "Memorial Day", which was first used in 1882.
  
Decoration Day was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 to honor Union and Confederate soldiers by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic (an organization for Northern Civil War veterans), in his General Order No. 11, and was first observed on 30 May 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. The date was chosen because it was not the anniversary of a battle.

The holiday changed after World War 1 from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war.

In 1971, Memorial Day was declared a federal national holiday by an act of Congress, and its observance was set on the last Monday in May.

What's in a Name

US soldiers in World War 1 were called doughboys. The name is believed to have originated in reference to large round brass buttons worn by American infantrymen which looked like little round doughnuts called doughboys. The term was first used to describe the buttons and then became the common slang for the infantrymen themselves and was especially popular during World War I.

'Sieg Heil' means 'Hail to Victory.'

Also D-Day comes from 'Designated Day' for Operation Overlord, the code name for the Allied invasion of Northern France on June 6, 1944, during World War II.

A Hundred Years Ago

Here are a few things from a century ago. -
1910 - First photo of Halley's Comet 1910
1910 Boy Scouts of America is founded
1911 First air conditioner invented 
1912 Sinking of the Titanic
1912 First use of zippers in clothing
1913 Panama Canal completed
1914 Outbreak of World War I
1915 Fist use of poison gas in warfare
1916 Albert Einstein - General Theory of Relativity
1917 USA enters World War I
1918 Lawrence leads Arabs into Damascus
1919 First airline between London and Paris