Today was memorial day and a public holiday in the US “ to honor veterans of all wars, but its roots are in America’s deadliest conflict, the Civil War. Approximately 620,000 soldiers died, about two-thirds from disease“.

In Minnesota, first official Memorial Day service was celebrated at Fort Snelling at a large in-person gatherings after two years of the pandemic. Gov. Tim Walz, who spoke at the outdoor service during the tail end of a rain storm, reportedly told:

“It matters to come here and honor this day. It matters to put the flags on the graves, but what matters most [is] are we honoring their legacy by the way we live? The people who lie here literally stood in the face of tyranny and potentially the loss of our entire freedoms. And they stood it down.”

Most news updates including reporting of Coronavirus updates by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) took a day off today from their reporting too.

This USA Today articles provides refresher background on why we celebrate memorial day and its history of the holiday in the US.