Meaning of Mayday

1st of May, a public holiday that is also known as May Day. The first thing that came to my mind was the distress signal that so often appears in fiction and one that we hope we never have to use. The first thing that I thought was that something really awful must have happened in May or the 1st of May to have led to this.

Enter good ol’ Google and Wikipedia. It seems that May Day and Mayday have nothing in common with each other. One can refer to any holiday in the month of May while the other is a distress call based on the french word m’aider, meaning “help me”.