Today, February 17, 2020, is Presidents’ Day. For some, it’s a break from work. For others, it’s just another day to enjoy retirement. For me, and I hope some of you, it’s a day to use the Internet to explore the history behind the Federal holiday and to find out how Americans are celebrating the day.
Where do we start? One place would be in a browser. We could open Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari or whatever browser we use and then go to Bing or Google search. I did that this morning and simply entered “Presidents’ Day” (without the quotes) in the search field. In Bing, 1,300,000 results appeared. In Google, the number was 367,000,000. In either case, that’s a lot of information! Interestingly, I found three different spellings for the day: Presidents’ Day, President’s Day and Presidents Day. However, on opm.gov – which is the official Office of Personnel Management governmental website regarding Federal holidays, the day is listed as Washington’s Birthday. Why? Directly from their website:
This holiday is designated as “Washington’s Birthday” in section 6103(a) of title 5 of the United States Code, which is the law that specifies holidays for Federal employees. Though other institutions such as state and local governments and private businesses may use other names, it is our policy to always refer to holidays by the names designated in the law.
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/federal-holidays/#url=2020
In the results that appeared from my searches, here are a few sites I explored and found of interest:
- The History Channel Website
- Encyclopedia Britannica
- Wikipedia (redirects to Washington’s Birthday)
Needless to say, many of my search results had to do with Presidents’ Day sales!
My searches were pretty broad but easily narrowed. I went back and searched “Presidents’ Day local celebrations 2020” (without the quotes). A number of interesting sites came up including this ONE.
Oh, but there are other ways of finding out about Presidents’ Day. On my iPhone, I asked Siri “What is Presidents’ Day?” She responded by telling me about “Washington’s Birthday” so I guess at Apple, they are calling it the same as the OPM site. I didn’t stop there, however. I asked Alexa the same question and she also replied with an explanation of Washington’s birthday. My Google Home device replied by quoting Wikipedia’s article about Washington’s Birthday. When I asked Cortana, she brought up videos related to the day without actually telling me about the holiday. I had to ask her “Tell me about Presidents’ Day” and she answered with a definition from alphabet-soup.net.
I’m always amazed at how much information we have now at our finger-tips. Just a simple day like Presidents’ Day can be the catalyst for finding a cornucopia of information. When you have a few minutes today, give Presidents’ Day a search and see what interesting things you can find!
