The TIME Magazine Vault

Denver Post / Getty Images

The Flowers of Spring

Though spring may officially start at the equinox, TIME noted in 1966 that some people measure the start of the season in their own way: "[To] millions of U.S. gardeners, spring officially begins the minute they stroll through the local flower show and receive their newest seed catalogue—and many of them have. In Milwaukee, nearly 100,000 people recently walked out of snow and subfreezing temperatures straight into a lush garden where a stone Saint Francis of Assisi stood by a gurgling waterfall and fields of flowering forsythia and geraniums. In Kansas City, Mo., the theme was 'A Circus of Flowers,' with a candy-striped circus tent summoning up a gay, summer air. For the opening of Cleveland's 23rd show, neither blizzards nor bone-chilling winds sweeping off of ice-covered Lake Erie could deter 18,000 hardy hobbyists."

The Flowers of Spring

Denver Post / Getty Images

May 10, 1937

Kentucky Derby Favorites

Stewards of the Kentucky Derby watching race through

Alfred Eisenstaedt—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty

Chicago History Museum / Getty Images

May Day and Labor

In the 1920s, as communist, socialist and labor movements spread — particularly in Europe — the first day of May took on even more importance as a holiday for workers. In 1929, TIME explained why: "To old-fashioned people, May Day means flowers, grass, picnics, children, clean frocks," the magazine noted. "To up-and-doing Socialists and Communists it means speechmaking, parading, bombs, brickbats, conscientious violence. This connotation dates back to May Day, 1886, when some 200,000 U. S. workmen engineered a nationwide strike for an eight-hour day."

May Day and Labor

Chicago History Museum / Getty Images

May 12, 1961

An American in Space

US astronaut Alan Shepard is lifted up t

AFP/Getty Images

Denver Post/Getty Images

May 18 Is Endangered Species Day

"According to Interior Secretary Stewart L. Udall, no fewer than 78 native American species — 14 mammals, 36 birds, six reptiles and 22 varieties of fish — are on the brink of vanishing from the earth forever," TIME noted in its coverage of the first animals covered by the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966. "In almost every case, their deadly enemy is man... The Florida alligators are on the decline because of commercial poachers; the Atlantic sturgeon because of polluted waters; the peregrine falcon because of farmers' pesticides; the dusky seaside sparrow because of the mosquito-control program at Cape Kennedy."