The "mayday" procedure word was originated in 1923, by a senior radio officer at Croydon Airport in London. The officer, Frederick Stanley Mockford, was asked to think of a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency. Since much of the traffic at the time was between Croydon and Le Bourget Airport in Paris, he proposed the expression "mayday" from the French m'aider ('help me'), a shortened form of venez m'aider ('come and help me').
It is unrelated to the holiday May Day.
Before the voice call "mayday", SOS was the Morse code equivalent of the mayday call. In 1927, the International Radiotelegraph Convention of Washington adopted the voice call mayday as the radiotelephone distress call in place of the SOS radiotelegraph (Morse code) call.
Mayday!!!
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Mayday!!!
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The Annoyed Man
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Re: Mayday!!!
Fascinating. I had no idea.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
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― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
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Re: Mayday!!!
“Mayday!” a lot easier to say than “dit dit dit dah dah dah dit dit dit”! 
The left lies about everything. Truth is a liberal value, and truth is a conservative value, but it has never been a left-wing value. People on the left say whatever advances their immediate agenda. Power is their moral lodestar; therefore, truth is always subservient to it. - Dennis Prager