This Memorial Day happens to mark the 20th anniversary of a consular agreement between the U.S. and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam after a break of almost 19 years. President Bill Clinton announced the formal normalization of diplomatic relations with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on July 12, 1995, just over 20 years since the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, the then-capital of South Vietnam. The contentious intervention to preserve South Vietnam from communist takeover cost 58,000 America lives — about 49,000 from combat. Currently, of the more than 21 million living veterans in the U.S., there are over 7 million from the Vietnam Era, including over a half million that served in earlier or later conflicts. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at <www.census.gov/mobile>.
Sunday, May 25th. This Memorial Day weekend will have seen many backyard parties among friends and neighbors. In addition to grilled chicken, hamburgers and hot dogs, there will be baked beans and potato chips, often joined by a salad. Most grocery stores now carry a wide variety of greens, where some years ago, the standard all across America was iceberg lettuce. In fact, this is National Salad Month. It’s also National Vinegar Month, a key ingredient in many salad dressings. Annually, Americans eat an average of over 16 pounds of lettuce, 15 of onions, seven pounds of peppers, four of celery, and 100 pounds of tomatoes. To flavor the salads, nearly 33,000 Americans work in the mayonnaise, seasonings, dressings and prepared sauce industry’s 674 manufacturers. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at <www.census.gov>.
Saturday, May 24th. In a way, today marks the 170th birthday of the World Wide Web. Only it was electro-mechanical, not digital. On this date in 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse activated the first telegraph line, sending a dots-and-dashes code message from the U.S. Capitol building to a receiver in Baltimore. The ability of the telegraph to communicate quickly over long distances of land made it an immediate success. By the late1850s, the first telegraph cable had been laid across the Atlantic Ocean, and in 1861, the telegraph spanned the continental United States. Over the ensuing decades, the wires wrapped around the world. From the 1844 demonstration, telecommunications today as grown into a $563 billion a year industry, and employs nearly 1.1 million workers. Profile America is in its17th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.