Mayday - M'aidez(Help Me)
Mayday - M'aidez(Help Me) Mayday is an internationally recognized radio word to signal distress. It's used mostly by aircraft and boats, and most of us are happily only familiar with it through TV and fiction. There was a lot of air traffic between England and France in 1923, and evidently there were enough international problems over the English Channel that both parties wanted to find a good distress signal that everyone would understand. S.O.S But surely there already was a distress signal that everyone understood? There was—S.O.S.—but there were some problems with it: Owing to the difficulty of distinguishing the letter "S" by telephone, the international distress signal "S.O.S." will give place to the words "May-day", the phonetic equivalent of "M'aidez", the French for "Help me." —" New Air Distress Signal," The Times [London], 2 Feb. 1923 SOS was most commonly used in telegraphic communications, where the u...