100 Fun Facts About U.S. Holiday

A federal holiday on a Saturday is observed when?

The Friday before becomes the day off for most federal workers, and a Sunday holiday moves to Monday, so a weekend never swallows any of the eleven federal holidays.

Which federal holiday did the Uniform Monday Holiday Act create?

Columbus Day joined the federal calendar under the act, which took effect in 1971 and shifted older holidays to Mondays to give federal workers more three-day weekends.

Which day is a paid holiday only for federal employees who work in the Washington, D.C. area?

Inauguration Day became a capital-area holiday in 1957, after a congressman argued the festivities would make it too hard for workers to reach their desks; federal staff elsewhere work as usual.

What is the official federal name of the February holiday most Americans call Presidents' Day?

Washington's Birthday is still its name in federal law: Congress never renamed it, and 'Presidents' Day' spread through state laws and advertisers after the holiday moved to a Monday in 1971.

Each year, a senator reads aloud which of George Washington's writings?

The Farewell Address was first read to Congress in 1862, after citizens petitioned for it to mark the 130th anniversary of his birth, and the Senate later made the reading a yearly custom.

Which president signed the bill that created Martin Luther King Jr. Day?

Ronald Reagan signed it in 1983 after first opposing a federal holiday, and it was first observed in January 1986; not until 2000 did every state mark the day.

Which musician wrote the song 'Happy Birthday' as part of the campaign for a King holiday?

Stevie Wonder put it on his 1980 album Hotter than July, then helped Coretta Scott King deliver a petition of more than six million signatures to Congress before the holiday bill passed.

After voters rejected a King holiday in 1990, the NFL pulled Super Bowl XXVII from which state?

Arizona lost the game to Pasadena, California, then won one back: voters approved the holiday in 1992 and the state hosted the Super Bowl in 1996.

Juneteenth marks the 1865 day a Union general's order announced freedom in which Texas city?

Galveston is where Major General Gordon Granger arrived with some 2,000 troops to enforce an Emancipation Proclamation that was by then two and a half years old.

Which president signed the law that made Juneteenth a federal holiday?

Joe Biden signed it on June 17, 2021, and federal workers got their first Juneteenth holiday the very next day.

Which activist, called the 'grandmother of Juneteenth', set out on foot from Fort Worth for Washington at 89?

Opal Lee began the walk in September 2016 to ask for a federal holiday, and five years later she was a guest of honor when the Juneteenth law was signed.

Whose years of editorials prompted Abraham Lincoln to proclaim a national Thanksgiving in 1863?

Sarah Josepha Hale, the magazine editor credited with 'Mary Had a Little Lamb', wrote to one president after another until Lincoln agreed and set the last Thursday of November.

What did critics nickname the 1939 Thanksgiving after Roosevelt moved it a week earlier?

Franksgiving mocked Franklin Roosevelt's change, and so many states kept the old date that Americans carved their turkeys on two different Thursdays until Congress settled the matter.

President Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving a week earlier in 1939 hoping to help which group?

Retailers had feared a short Christmas shopping season in a year when November had five Thursdays; Congress ended the rival dates in 1941 by fixing the fourth Thursday in law.

Which NFL team has hosted a game every Thanksgiving Day since 1945, after also doing so in the mid-1930s?

The Detroit Lions' first owner, George A. Richards, also owned a big radio station and got NBC to carry the game live across its network, a gimmick to draw fans; Dallas joined the holiday slate in 1966.

What replaced live zoo animals in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1927?

Giant balloons, starting with Felix the Cat, took over from animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo; the parade later paused from 1942 to 1944 because rubber and helium were needed for the war.

Which president made the annual turkey 'pardon' a permanent Thanksgiving tradition in 1989?

George H. W. Bush made the reprieve an official yearly ritual in his first Thanksgiving in office; in the ceremony's early decades, presidents usually ate the turkeys they were given.

Which president first received an official National Turkey Federation Thanksgiving turkey, in 1947?

Harry S. Truman's turkey was a poultry-industry promotion, not a pardon; John F. Kennedy spared his bird in November 1963, just three days before his assassination.

Police in which US city began calling the chaotic shopping day after Thanksgiving 'Black Friday'?

Philadelphia police used it in the 1950s for the crowds and traffic jams; the city's merchants tried and failed to rebrand the day 'Big Friday' before stores recast it as the day their books move into the black.

'Cyber Monday' was invented in 2005 by a division of which organisation?

The National Retail Federation's online arm, Shop.org, coined it after noticing that online sales spiked when people got back to fast office internet connections after the holiday weekend.

Which Founding Father wrote to his wife that 'the second day of July' would be America's great anniversary?

John Adams was thinking of the day Congress voted for independence; the country chose the date on the Declaration instead, and Adams and Jefferson both died on its 50th anniversary in 1826.

The United States chose July 4, 1946 to grant independence to which country?

The Philippines kept July 4 as its own Independence Day until 1962, when it switched to June 12 to honor its 1898 declaration of independence from Spain.

Which small town claims the country's oldest continuous Independence Day celebration, since 1785?

Bristol, Rhode Island dates its celebration to the 'Patriotic Exercises' first led in 1785 by Henry Wight, a minister who had fought in the Revolutionary War.

In which New York neighbourhood does Nathan's hold its July 4th hot dog eating contest?

Coney Island is the contest's home, but the legend that four immigrants started it there in 1916 was a publicity invention, as one of its promoters admitted in 2010.

Which competitive eater transformed the Nathan's contest in 2001 by eating 50 hot dogs?

Takeru Kobayashi, a rookie from Japan, almost doubled the old record of about 25 and won six straight titles before Joey Chestnut dethroned him in 2007.

Under which name was Memorial Day first observed nationally, on May 30, 1868?

Decoration Day took its name from the custom of laying flowers on soldiers' graves, and 'Memorial Day' did not become the holiday's official federal name until 1967.

General John A. Logan, whose 1868 order set the first national Memorial Day, led which organisation?

The Grand Army of the Republic, the brotherhood of Union veterans, began as a fraternal club and grew into a political force that pressed Congress for soldiers' pensions.

Which flower do many Americans wear on Memorial Day in remembrance of the war dead?

Poppy: the custom grew from the First World War poem 'In Flanders Fields', which inspired YWCA worker Moina Michael to pin on a silk one and hand out more to others.

The National Moment of Remembrance Act asks Americans to pause on Memorial Day at what time?

3:00 pm is when a law passed in 2000 asks Americans to stop for one minute; Congress said the pause was needed to reclaim Memorial Day as the solemn day it was meant to be.

New York held the first Labor Day parade in 1882, but which western state first made it a legal holiday?

Oregon passed its law in February 1887, beating New York, which had been first to introduce a bill; Congress made the day a federal holiday in 1894.

Which president signed the 1894 law that made Labor Day a federal holiday, during the Pullman Strike?

Grover Cleveland signed it on June 28, 1894, days before he sent federal troops against the Pullman strikers; whether Peter McGuire or Matthew Maguire first proposed the holiday is still argued.

According to an old American fashion rule, Labor Day is the last day it is acceptable to wear what?

White was summer wear, so the rule tied the holiday to the unofficial end of summer; seersucker fell under the same ban.

Veterans Day began under what name, marking the end of fighting in the First World War?

Armistice Day marked the ceasefire of November 11, 1918; Congress changed the name in 1954, after the Second World War and Korea, so that the day would honor veterans of every war.

Which president signed the 1954 law that gave Veterans Day its name?

Dwight D. Eisenhower approved the change so that the day would honor those who served in the Second World War and Korea as well, and he issued the first Veterans Day proclamation in October 1954.

Which federal holiday moved to a Monday in 1971, then returned to its fixed date in 1978?

Veterans Day spent seven years on the fourth Monday of October, but most states kept marking November 11 and Congress gave in.

Columbus Day marks the explorer's 1492 landfall in which present-day country?

The Bahamas: Columbus was looking for a western sea route to Asia when he came ashore on one of its islands on October 12, 1492, and he sailed on to Cuba later that month.

Which US city was first to replace Columbus Day with an Indigenous peoples' day, in 1992?

Berkeley made the switch for the 500th anniversary of the 1492 landing, with its council first declaring October 12 a 'Day of Solidarity with Indigenous People'.

Which state has traditionally called the second Monday of October 'Discoverers' Day'?

Hawaii's law names the day for the Polynesian discoverers of the islands and adds that it is not to be treated as a state holiday, so state offices stay open.

Groundhog Day, February 2, has been marked 'officially' at Gobbler's Knob in which town since 1887?

Punxsutawney got the custom from German settlers, whose forebears had watched for a badger's shadow on Candlemas; in America the native groundhog took over the job.

Anna Jarvis founded which holiday in 1908, then spent decades denouncing how commercial it became?

Mother's Day began with her church service in Grafton, West Virginia, but she came to regret it so much that she spent her later years trying to have the holiday taken off the calendar.

Which president made Mother's Day an official holiday in 1914?

Woodrow Wilson made the second Sunday in May official in 1914; decades earlier Julia Ward Howe had tried to rally mothers for a day devoted to world peace.

Sonora Smart Dodd organised the first celebration of which holiday at a YMCA in Spokane in 1910?

Father's Day was her tribute to her own father, a Civil War veteran who raised six children alone; she proposed it after hearing a sermon in praise of mothers.

Which president signed the 1972 law making Father's Day a permanent national holiday?

Richard Nixon made it permanent; Lyndon Johnson's 1966 proclamation had covered only that one year, so the day stayed unofficial until Congress passed a resolution.

Flag Day, June 14, is also the official birthday of which branch of the U.S. armed forces?

The Army is older than the country it serves: it dates from June 14, 1775, more than a year before the Declaration of Independence and two years to the day before the Stars and Stripes was adopted.

Which state's law lists Flag Day, June 14, among its legal holidays?

Pennsylvania lists June 14 in its Legal Holiday Law; the state was home to William T. Kerr, who founded a Flag Day association there in 1888 and went on to lead the national one for 50 years.

The first American Arbor Day, in 1872, saw an estimated one million trees planted in which state?

Nebraska's settlers lacked trees for windbreaks, fuel and shade, so newspaper editor J. Sterling Morton proposed a planting day with prizes for the counties and people who planted the most.

Which annual observance grew out of Senator Gaylord Nelson's nationwide environmental teach-in in April 1970?

Earth Day drew an estimated 20 million Americans that first year, and its success spurred the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency before the year was out.

Maulana Karenga created which holiday in 1966?

Kwanzaa was his answer to the Watts riots of the year before: a week-long celebration meant to bring African Americans together around seven shared principles.

Cinco de Mayo commemorates an 1862 Mexican victory over which country's army?

France lost the Battle of Puebla that day, but the date is not Mexico's independence day, which falls on September 16 and marks the 1810 call to revolt against Spain.

Which road race, first run in 1897, is held each year on Patriots' Day?

The Boston Marathon was launched to mark the newly created holiday after a Boston club official came home inspired by the marathon at the first modern Olympics.

Which city has dyed its river green for St. Patrick's Day since 1962?

Chicago got the idea after green dye was used to trace illegal sewage discharges into its river, and the city's plumbers' union took on the yearly job of dyeing it.

Which city held the earliest recorded St. Patrick's Day parade on what is now U.S. soil, in 1601?

St. Augustine, Florida was a Spanish colony whose Irish vicar, Ricardo Artur, organised the parade, more than a century and a half before Irish soldiers first marched in New York.

Which New York newspaper's owner staged the first New Year's Eve ball drop?

The New York Times had moved into a tower on the square renamed in its honor, and when the city banned his fireworks, owner Adolph Ochs lowered a lit ball instead in 1907; only wartime dimouts in 1942 and 1943 have stopped it.

Which New Year's parade never marches on a Sunday, a rule begun in 1893 to avoid spooking horses outside churches?

The Rose Parade moves to January 2 instead; Pasadena's Valley Hunt Club began it in 1890, and the football game was added in 1902 to help pay for it.

Congress fixed Election Day on a Tuesday in 1845 mainly to suit which group of voters?

Farmers needed Sunday for church, a day to travel to the polls and Wednesday for market, which left Tuesday, in a month when the harvest was already in.

Before pumpkins, immigrants who brought Halloween to North America carved lanterns from what?

Turnips were what the Irish carved to frighten off wandering spirits; once in America the immigrants found the native pumpkin made a better lantern, and it took over.

Anoka, Minnesota calls itself the world capital of which holiday, having held parades since 1920 to curb pranks?

Halloween pranks there had run to cows turned loose on Main Street, soaped windows and tipped outhouses, so civic leaders organised a parade and party to keep youngsters busy.

Esther Howland sold America's first mass-produced cards for which holiday?

Valentine's Day cards trimmed with lace were costly imports until Howland copied one she had been sent and built a business that earned her the name 'Mother of the American Valentine'.

Which constitutional amendment moved presidential inaugurations from March to January?

The 20th Amendment, adopted in 1933, shortened the 'lame duck' stretch in which a defeated president and Congress stayed in office for months after an election.

A 2004 law requires schools that take federal money to teach about which document every September 17?

The Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787, and Senator Robert Byrd wrote the teaching rule into a 2004 spending bill; the day had earlier been known as Citizenship Day.

Utah's Pioneer Day marks the 1847 arrival in the Salt Lake Valley of settlers led by whom?

Brigham Young led the trek west after the church's founder, Joseph Smith, was murdered in 1844; Utah marks the July 24 arrival with parades, fireworks and rodeos.

Nevada Day, marking statehood in 1864, is celebrated with a parade through which city?

Carson City, the state capital, hosts the parade; the holiday itself moved in 2000 from October 31 to the last Friday of the month to create a three-day weekend.

Which state observes Casimir Pulaski Day on the first Monday of March?

Illinois created the holiday in 1977 for its large Polish American community, honoring a Polish-born cavalry commander who died of wounds suffered fighting the British at Savannah in 1779.

Which state declared Mardi Gras a legal holiday in 1875?

Louisiana acted 18 years after a secret society of New Orleans businessmen, the Mistick Krewe of Comus, staged a torch-lit procession with floats that set the pattern; Mobile, Alabama claims an even older Mardi Gras.

What national deadline can Washington, D.C.'s Emancipation Day holiday push back?

Federal tax filing slips to the next business day whenever April 15 collides with the holiday, which counts for the IRS nationwide; it marks the 1862 abolition of slavery in the capital.

Which president lit the first National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse in 1923?

Calvin Coolidge pushed the button on Christmas Eve 1923. In 1979 Jimmy Carter's switch lit only the star on top, and he said the tree would stay dark until the American hostages in Iran were freed.

The June 11 state holiday marked by a floral parade through Honolulu honours which monarch?

Kamehameha I united the islands into a single kingdom. His grandson Kamehameha V proclaimed the holiday in his honour in 1871, and it was first celebrated the following June.

National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, when flags fly at half-staff, falls on which date?

December 7 is the day President Roosevelt called 'a date which will live in infamy'. His first draft said 'world history' before he changed it.

Since 1971, Memorial Day has been observed on which day each year?

Last Monday in May: Congress moved Memorial Day off its fixed date so federal workers would get a three-day weekend, one that now marks the unofficial start of summer.

Which president died on July 4, 1831, becoming the third to die on Independence Day?

James Monroe died in New York City, where he had moved to live with his daughter after his wife's death, five years to the day after two of his predecessors.

Which organisation 'tracks' Santa Claus across the sky for children each Christmas Eve, a tradition dating to 1955?

NORAD's tradition is said to date from a 1955 phone call, when a little girl looking for Santa reached a gruff colonel at its Colorado predecessor, who saw a publicity opportunity.

Green bean casserole, now a Thanksgiving staple, was invented in 1955 by a recipe developer at which food company?

Campbell's employee Dorcas Reilly devised it to sell cream of mushroom soup; it took off for Thanksgiving in the 1960s once the recipe was printed on the can's label.

Which Manhattan landmark has raised a towering Christmas tree, often 70 feet or taller, every year since 1933?

Rockefeller Center's first, unofficial tree went up in 1931, when Depression-era construction workers trimmed a 20-foot fir with strings of cranberries, paper garlands and a few tin cans.

Which motor race has been scheduled on or around Memorial Day ever since its first running in 1911?

The Indianapolis 500 was first won by Ray Harroun, whose car carried a novelty he had fitted himself: a rear-view mirror. Since 1974 it has been scheduled for the Sunday of the holiday weekend.

Which ship carried the Pilgrims to Plymouth in 1620, a year before the harvest feast remembered at Thanksgiving?

The Mayflower was meant to sail with a second ship, the Speedwell, which kept springing leaks and had to be left behind in England.

Seward's Day, a legal holiday in Alaska, marks the 1867 treaty that bought the territory from which country?

Russia agreed the sale with Secretary of State William Seward, and Alaskans get a second day off each October 18, the anniversary of the flag-raising that completed the handover.

Which composer's 1812 Overture, with its cannon fire, became an Independence Day fireworks staple after a 1974 concert?

Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote it about Napoleon's failed invasion of his homeland, not the War of 1812; conductor Arthur Fiedler chose it for a July 4 concert and the cannons stuck.

Which comedian hosted a Labor Day weekend telethon for muscular dystrophy charities every year from 1966 until 2010?

Jerry Lewis's telethon ran for up to 21 and a half hours and raised $2.45 billion by 2009; organisers chose that weekend because it was the only slot they were offered.

Since Congress settled a calendar dispute in 1941, Thanksgiving has fallen on which day of November every year?

Fourth Thursday was written into law to end confusion in the years when November has five Thursdays; from 1863 the feast had traditionally been held on the last one.

Besides the United States, which country has kept Labour Day on the first Monday of September since 1894?

Canada made it a statutory holiday in 1894, the same year as its neighbour; most other countries honour workers on 1 May instead.

Which cemetery, home of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, hosts Memorial Day ceremonies in its Memorial Amphitheater?

Arlington was created in 1864 on an estate the federal government had confiscated from the family of Confederate general Robert E. Lee in a dispute over tax.

Which bugle call, reworked by a Union general in 1862, sounds at Memorial Day ceremonies and military funerals?

Taps was first sounded at a burial that same year, because firing the customary three rifle volleys over the grave would have been unsafe with the enemy so close.

Which TV host created a New Year's Eve special in 1972 as a youthful rival to Guy Lombardo's big-band broadcasts?

Dick Clark felt the tuxedoed big-band shows reached only older viewers; his first edition was hosted by the rock band Three Dog Night while he reported from the street.

Which poet wrote down the words of Auld Lang Syne, the song Americans sing at midnight on New Year's Eve?

Robert Burns sent the poem to a song collection in 1788, saying he had taken it down from an old man; bandleader Guy Lombardo's midnight broadcasts helped make it an American New Year fixture.

A 1994 act of Congress encouraged Americans to treat Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a national day of what?

Service was the aim of the 1994 King Holiday and Service Act, signed by Bill Clinton, which challenges Americans to spend the day off volunteering in their communities.

Which Native people, led by Massasoit, joined the Plymouth colonists for three days of feasting in autumn 1621?

The Wampanoag came some ninety strong and went out and killed five deer, which they presented to the colony's governor and captain.

The New York Stock Exchange closes every spring for which Christian holy day, though no federal holiday marks it?

Good Friday is the only regular holiday the exchange takes that federal workers do not get, and it stays open on two federal holidays each autumn.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer first appeared in a 1939 Christmas booklet published by which department store chain?

Montgomery Ward handed out 2.4 million copies that first year; its writer Robert May had toyed with calling the reindeer Rollo or Reginald.

Which Georgia city, where the celebrations date to 1824, dyes its downtown fountains green for St. Patrick's Day?

Savannah is one of only two places in the country where March 17 is a legal holiday; the other is Suffolk County, Massachusetts, home of Boston.

Which president signed the 1870 law that first made Christmas, New Year's Day and Thanksgiving federal holidays?

Ulysses S. Grant signed it on June 28, 1870, but the days off covered only federal workers in the capital; the rest of the government's workforce waited until 1885.

Which president opened his lawn to Easter egg rollers in 1878, after Congress banned them from the Capitol grounds?

Rutherford B. Hayes and his wife Lucy took the egg rollers in two years after a rowdy Easter gathering wrecked the Capitol lawn and Congress outlawed using it as a playground.

Which president signed the 1978 proclamation creating National Grandparents Day, championed by housewife Marian McQuade?

Jimmy Carter signed it after McQuade, a West Virginia housewife, had lobbied governors and members of Congress in all fifty states; it falls on the first Sunday after Labor Day.

National Aviation Day, proclaimed by Franklin Roosevelt in 1939, falls on the birthday of which flying pioneer?

Orville Wright was still alive to see his birthday become a national observance; he lived until 1948, more than 35 years after his brother Wilbur died.

Small Business Saturday, the day after Black Friday, was launched in 2010 by which organisation as a marketing campaign?

American Express owns the name as a registered trademark, having launched the day with a national advertising campaign to steer shoppers towards independent local shops.

Which state has marked the second Monday in October as Native American Day since its 1990 'Year of Reconciliation'?

South Dakota made the change unanimously at the urging of Governor George Mickelson, in the same legislation that created a state holiday in honour of Martin Luther King.

Which state followed Massachusetts in 1907 by swapping its Fast Day for Patriots' Day, recalling Lexington and Concord?

Maine had been part of Massachusetts until 1820, so it shares the April holiday for the opening battles of the Revolutionary War, though it spells it Patriot's Day.

Which upstate New York village did Congress and President Johnson recognise in 1966 as the birthplace of Memorial Day?

Waterloo got the title a century after its claimed first observance, but scholars have questioned it, and many other towns say they were first.

Which Union general issued General Order No. 3 on June 19, 1865, the news of freedom that Juneteenth commemorates?

Gordon Granger had arrived that morning to command more than 2,000 federal troops; the name Juneteenth, a blend of the month and the date, did not appear until the 1890s.

German-speaking settlers brought Groundhog Day to America, but which animal did the forecasting in the old country?

Badger Day was the German name for Candlemas: a badger that saw sunshine meant four more weeks of winter, and the settlers switched animals and stretched the forecast to six.

Leif Erikson Day falls on October 9, the date in 1825 when a ship of pioneering immigrants arrived from which country?

Norway's emigrant ship Restauration reached New York Harbor that day; nobody knows the date the Norse explorer himself landed in the Americas, so its arrival was used instead.