Facts about Memorial Day

1. Memorial Day began as a response to the Civil War.

Memorial Day was a response to the unprecedented carnage of the Civil War. The tremendous loss of life and its effect on communities led to several spontaneous commemorations of the dead.

In 1864, women from Boalsburg, Pennsylvania, put flowers on the graves of their fallen soldiers from the just-fought Battle of Gettysburg. The next year, a group of women decorated the graves of soldiers buried in a Vicksburg, Mississippi, cemetery

Waterloo, New York, began holding an annual community service on May 5, 1866. Although many towns claimed the title, it was Waterloo that won congressional recognition as the “Birthplace of Memorial Day.”

2. Major General John A. Logan made Memorial Day official.

General Logan was commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union veterans. On May 5, 1868, he issued General Order No. 11, which set aside May 30, 1868, “for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.”

3. Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day.

The holiday was long known as Decoration Day thanks to the practice of decorating graves with flowers, wreaths, and flags. The name “Memorial Day” goes back to 1882, but the older name didn’t completely disappear until after World War II. It wasn’t until 1967 that federal law declared “Memorial Day” the official name.

4. Memorial Day is more of a franchise than a national holiday.

Calling Memorial Day a “national holiday” is a bit of a misnomer. While there have been 11 federal holidays created by Congress—including Memorial Day and Juneteenth—they apply only to federal employees and the District of Columbia. Federal Memorial Day, established in 1888, allowed Civil War veterans, many of whom were drawing a government paycheck, to honor their fallen comrades without being docked a day’s pay.

5. CBS helped identify one of the Unknown Soldiers.

“Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.” That is the inscription on the Tomb of the Unknowns, established at Arlington National Cemetery to inter the remains of the first Unknown Soldier, a World War I fighter, on November 11, 1921. Unknown soldiers from World War II and the Korean War were subsequently interred in the tomb on Memorial Day 1958.

An emotional President Ronald Reagan presided over the interment of six bones, the remains of an unidentified Vietnam War soldier, on May 28, 1984, a.k.a. Memorial Day. Fourteen years later, spurred by an investigation by CBS News, the Defense Department removed the remains from the Tomb of the Unknowns for DNA testing.

The once-unknown fighter was identified as Air Force pilot Lieutenant Michael Joseph Blassie, whose jet crashed in South Vietnam in 1972. “The CBS investigation suggested that the military review board that had changed the designation on Lt. Blassie’s remains to ‘unknown’ did so under pressure from veterans’ groups to honor a casualty from the Vietnam War,” The New York Times reported in 1998.

Lieutenant Blassie was reburied near his hometown of St. Louis. His crypt at Arlington remains permanently empty.