Labour Day

When it falls

1 May, a public holiday in more than eighty countries. India's states keep it, and Maharashtra and Gujarat mark their founding day on the same date (1960).

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

The day commemorates the Haymarket affair in Chicago in May 1886, when a strike for the eight-hour day ended in a bomb, police gunfire and the hanging of four labour leaders. The Second International chose the date in 1889 for a worldwide demonstration, and by 1890 the first of May was the workers' day everywhere except the United States, which chose September instead.

In India the day was first kept in Madras in 1923 by the Labour Kisan Party, which raised a red flag there; the eight-hour day and the weekly rest the marches asked for are the Factories Act now.

The older May Day beneath it, the maypole, the flowers and the crowning of a May queen, is the spring festival of northern Europe and predates the workers' day by centuries.

How the day is kept

• Marches and rallies by trade unions in the capitals of the world; the largest are in Europe and Latin America.
• A day off work in most countries; in the former Soviet countries the parades survive as the day of spring and labour.
• Maypoles danced round in England and Germany, lily of the valley given in France.

More world days