Memorial Day history timeline

The last Monday in May marks the US holiday called “Memorial Day”, when Americans take the day off to honor U.S. military personnel who have died while serving in the armed forces over the years. To commemorate the occasion, we have created a condensed visual timeline of the Memorial Day history and included some interesting facts about this holiday.

History of Memorial Day: a timeline

• 1865: Early commemorations after the Civil War
• 1868, May 30: First observed as “Decoration Day”
• 1882: First attestation of the name “Memorial Day”
• 1890: Adopted by Northern states
• 1920: Poppy adopted as symbol of reference
• 1922: Lincoln Memorial dedicated
• 1967: “Memorial Day” declared official name
• 1971: Established on the last Monday of May
• 2000: National Moment of Remembrance set up

FAQs about Memorial Day

To get all the information you need about Memorial Day, here are some answers to the most frequently asked questions about this popular US holiday.

About the Memorial Day history timeline

The Memorial Day visual timeline was created using Office Timeline, a user-friendly timeline maker for PowerPoint that helps you visualize any sequence of events in a clear and easy-to-follow way. You can download this Memorial Day history timeline for PowerPoint for free and use it for your own purposes or modify manually it to include other key milestones.

To edit it, get the free trial that includes all the powerful features you need to create and update a timeline with swimlanes and multiple time scales.