It's coming and it's official. Monday is Labor Day and that means a lot of things to a lot of different people, depending on where you are in life.

For some, it means a three-day weekend and for others it means the kids are heading back to school. But whatever the reason you like to celebrate the day when we honor the working-class, here are some things you may not have known about the holiday.

The first celebrated Labor Day was hosted on Tuesday, September 5, in the year 1882 in New York City.

The event was planned by the Central Labor Union who organized about 10,000 workers and had them begin walking from City Hall all the way to 42nd Street. After the march, labor workers met with their families in Wendel's Elm Park for speeches, a picnic and concert.

But if we go back a bit further from that time, we might find that America didn't come up with the idea first.

It's been said that Canada actually came up with an idea to host a day honoring the labor movement in 1872 when they held their "Nine-Hour Movement" in order to show support for striking workers.

According to one account, there has been a bit of a dispute over who was the first person to actually come up with the idea to organize what we know today as the Labor Day holiday.

Some give credit to a man named Matthew Maguire, who was a machinist, while others suggest it was Peter J. McGuire, co-founder of the America Federation of Labor.

The very first state to celebrate Labor Day as a legal holiday was Oregon in 1887.

Until the Adamson Act was passed on September 3, of 1916, establishing an 8-hour work day, Americans worked as much as 12-hours a day and seven days a week!

As a sidenote, and some ladies still hold to this tradition today, there was a 'no white after Labor Day' rule where upper-class Americans would return from their summer vacations and put away their white skirts, white shoes, white purses, shirts, and so on until Spring.

Whatever it is you decide to do this Labor Day, just make sure it's a safe one.

 

 

 

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