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Presidents' Day (Washington's Birthday) (Third Monday in February) In recent years Americans have continued the custom of commemorating Washington’s birthday – though another date change has occurred. Public Law 90-363, changing the federal observance of certain holidays to Mondays, was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1968 and became effective in 1971. According to its […]
Memorial Day (Last Monday in May) IIP Photo Archive (Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0) It was 1866 and the United States was recovering from the long and bloody Civil War between the North and the South. Surviving soldiers came home, some with missing limbs, and all with stories to tell. Henry Welles, a drugstore owner in […]
Independence Day (July 4) “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” – words written on the Liberty Bell Signing of the Declaration By the middle of the 1700s, the 13 colonies that made up part of England’s empire in the New World were finding it difficult to be ruled by a […]
Labor Day (First Monday in September) Eleven-year-old Peter McGuire sold papers on the street in New York City. He shined shoes and cleaned stores and later ran errands. It was 1863 and his father, a poor Irish immigrant, had just enlisted to fight in the Civil War. Peter had to help support his mother and […]
