May 30 is a great time to honor our veterans and so is any other day, especially on Veterans' Day. Memorial Day is the one of the two often-confused holidays that's meant to honor the fallen.
On Nov. 11, 1919, exactly one year after the first world war ended, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that date would be Armistice Day.
Nineteen years later, after hundreds of thousands perished in the second world war, veterans groups called for the Armistice Day to be revised and called Veterans Day, according to U.S. Veterans Affairs (VA).
Memorial Day was born of a different era and a war that saw more lives lost than the American Revolution, World War 1 and World War 2 combined.
Some say Memorial Day was created back on May 1, 1865 by a group of former slaves who wanted to honor 257 Union soldiers that had been buried in a Confederate prison camp. The freedmen dug up the bodies from a mass grave, gave the deceased soldiers a proper burial and then put on a parade.
That's a true story, but it isn't the officially's declared beginning of Memorial Day. Like Veterans Day, Memorial Day evolved from a different holiday.
Three years after the Civil War's end, a war in which nearly half a million American soldiers perished, Maj. Gen. John A. Logan, head of a Union army veteran's group, declared May 30 as Memorial Day.
After several disputes about Memorial Day's birthplace, President Lyndon Johnson officially gave the honor to Waterloo, New York.
"There, a ceremony on May 5, 1866, honored local veterans who had fought in the Civil War. Businesses closed and residents flew flags at half-staff," the VA says. "Supporters of Waterloo's claim say earlier observances in other places were either informal, not community-wide or one-time events."
After World War 1, observance of Memorial Day extended from the loss of life in the Civil War to honor fallen soldiers from all wars in which the U.S. participated.
So while today is fantastic for showing some love to the troops, the veterans will likely be thinking about comrades and family heroes who didn't come back home.
