National Maritime Day is a United States holiday created to recognize the maritime industry. It is observed on May 22, the date that the American steamship Savannah set sail from Savannah, Georgia on the first ever transoceanic voyage under steam power. The holiday was created by the United States Congress on May 20, 1933.
Harvey Milk Day is organized by the Harvey Milk Foundation and celebrated globally each year held May 22 in memory of Harvey Milk, a gay rights activist assassinated in 1978.
In California, Harvey Milk Day is recognized as a day of special significance for public schools. The day was established by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2009 following the success of the award-winning feature film Milk retracing Milk’s life.
The World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development is a United Nations–sanctioned international holiday for the promotion of diversity issues. It is currently held on May 21. The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed this holiday due to UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity in November 2001. It was proclaimed by UN Resolution 57/249.
Diversity Day, officially known as “The World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development”, is an opportunity to help communities understand the value of cultural diversity and learn how to live together in harmony. It was adopted in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
National Waitstaff Day is celebrated on May 21st of each year. Waiting staff, wait staff, or waitstaff are those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers — supplying them with food and drink as requested. Traditionally, a male waiting tables is called a “waiter” and a female a “waitress” with the gender-neutral version being a “server”. Other gender-neutral versions include using “waiter” indiscriminately for males and females, “waitperson”, or the little-used Americanism “waitron”, which was coined in the 1980s.
Waiting on tables is (along with nursing and teaching) part of the service sector, and among the most common occupations in the United States. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that, as of May 2008, there were over 2.2 million persons employed as servers in the U.S.
Many businesses choose for the people waiting to all wear a uniform, a tradition that has been around in the waiting industry for centuries.
In recent times there has been a trend towards automation in the service of food and drink waiting, with the advent of technologies such as robotics to take on the waiting roles that once required human staff.
World Metrology Day celebrates the signature by representatives of seventeen nations of the Metre Convention on 20 May 1875. The Convention set the framework for global collaboration in the science of measurement and in its industrial, commercial and societal application. The original aim of the Metre Convention – the worldwide uniformity of measurement – remains as important today as it was in 1875.
The World Metrology Day project is currently realized jointly by the BIPM and the OIML together with PTB International Technical Cooperation.