On May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson (above) issued a
presidential proclamation that officially established the first
national Mother’s Day holiday to celebrate America’s mothers.

The idea for a “Mother’s Day” is credited by some to Julia Ward
Howe (1872) and by others to Anna Jarvis (1907), who both
suggested a holiday dedicated to a day of peace.

In his first Mother’s Day proclamation, Wilson stated that the
holiday offered a chance to “[publicly express] our love and
reverence for the mothers of our country.”

J. C. Leyendecker painted ‘Pot of Hyacinths’ to be used
on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post’s May 30, 1914
issue.

(between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506)

The first Columbus Day celebration took place on October
12, 1792, when the Columbian Order of New York, better
known as Tammany Hall, held an event to commemorate
the 300th anniversary of the historic landing.
 

In 1966, Mariano A. Lucca, from Buffalo, New York, founded
the National Columbus Day Committee, which lobbied to
make Columbus Day a federal holiday.      

These efforts were successful and legislation to create
Columbus Day as a federal holiday was signed by then
President Lyndon Johnson (below) on June 28, 1968,
to be effective beginning in 1971.       

Congress passed the legislation proclaiming the first Sunday
after Labor Day as National Grandparents’ Day in the U.S.
and, on August 3, 1978, then-President Jimmy Carter (below) 
signed the proclamation.   

The flower of the U.S. National Grandparents Day
is the forget-me-not which blooms in the spring. 

The seasonal flowers are given in appreciation to
grandparents on this day.