Mayday

Mayday, repeated three times, has become the official international radio signal for distress. It was coined in 1923 by Frederick Mockford (1897-1962) a senior radio officer at Croydon Airport in the south of England. Since most of the air traffic in those early days was between Croydon and Le Bourget in Paris, Mockford hit upon the word mayday, a corruption of the French m’aidez, which means help me.