Finally the return of my Mindless Fact Monday!!! Because today is Memorial Day, I will give a few Memorial Day facts and a few regular ones...
- Memorial Day was first called Decoration Day because of the practice of decorating the soldier's graves with flowers.
- On May 30, 1868, President Ulysses S. Grant presided over the first Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery - which, until 1864, was Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's plantation.
- On Memorial Day, flags should be flown at half-staff until noon only, then raised to the top of the staff.
- Memorial Day was declared a federal holiday in 1971.
- On Memorial Day weekend in 1988, 2,500 motorcyclists rode into Washington D.C., for the first Rolling Thunder rally to draw attention to Vietnam War soldiers still missing in action or prisoners of war. By 2002, the numbers had swelled to 300,000 bikers, many of them veterans.
- "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.
Now for a few fun ones...
- Penguins can jump 6 feet out of the water!
- Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
- In Raiders of the Lost Ark, there is a wall carving of R2-D2 and C-3PO behind the ark.
- If you were to spell out numbers, you would have to go to the number 1,000 before you found the letter "a".
- If a raisin is dropped into a glass of champagne it will bounce up and down in the glass.
Thank you to all the soldiers who fought and died for our country and our freedom.
They fell, but o'er their glorious grave
Floats free the banner of the cause they died to save.
~ Francis Marion Crawford ~
