On this day in 1874, in the second Battle of Adobe Walls in the Texas Panhandle, buffalo hunters with high-powered rifles fended off an attack by an Indian force in the last major battle with Indians in Texas. Helen Keller, one of the most famous of Americans with physical impediments who overcame them to become a world celebrity, was born in Alabama on this day in 1880. Most paeans to Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan do not usually go on to explain that Helen Keller also went on to become one of the major spokespersons for socialism all around the world. The first legislation establishing a national Labor Day holiday was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1894. It is one of the major failures of a holiday in my book.
Nothing is celebrated, except one last fling before school starts.
I know of no one who has a family Labor Day tradition, other than going to the lake one last time. Juan Trippe, aviation pioneer who founded Pan-American airlines in 1927, was born on this day in 1899. His airline inaugurated tourist fares to Europe in 1952 and began jet service from New York to Paris six years later. On this day in 1905, mutinous Russian soldiers took control of the battleship Potemkin in the Black Sea and threw the commander and several other officers overboard. On this day in 1917, the Congress also passed the legislation establishing Daylight Savings Time.