What is "mayday"

distress call, 1923, apparently an Englished spelling of French m'aider, shortening of venez m'aider "come help me!" But possibly a random coinage with coincidental resemblance:\n\n"May Day" Is Airplane SOS\n
ENGLISH aviators who use radio telephone transmitting sets on their planes, instead of telegraph sets, have been puzzling over the problem of choosing a distress call for transmission by voice. The letters SOS wouldn't do, and just plain "help!" was not liked, and so "May Day" was chosen. This was thought particularly fitting since it sounds very much like the French m'aidez, which means "help me."

["The Wireless Age," June 1923]

alt. An international distress signal used by shipping and aircraft n. An international distress signal used by shipping and aircraft

Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice procedure radio communications.

It is used to signal a life-threatening emergency primarily by aviators and mariners, but in some countries local organizations such as firefighters, police forces, and transportation organizations also use the term. The call is always given three times in a row ("Mayday Mayday Mayday") to prevent its being mistaken for some similar-sounding phrase under noisy conditions, and to distinguish an actual Mayday call from a message about a Mayday call.

Mayday, like the former Love Parade, is one of the oldest and most reputed electronic music festivals in Germany, having its debut on 1991 and Katowice, Poland, having its debut on 2000. Despite the name, Mayday festivals date oscillates between April and December (these being called Winter Mayday). Currently, the festival takes place only in around 30 April in Dortmund and 10 November in Katowice.

Each Mayday has a theme. Until 2013 it was composed by Members of Mayday, DJs WestBam and Klaus Jankuhn.

Since 1998 Mayday (Germany) is supported by eve&rave Münster e.V. with drug-information-desks.

Mayday is a live album by Hugh Cornwell. It was a live show recorded at Sankey's Soap in Manchester on 1 May 1998, hence the title.

With Cornwell are Mike Polson (guitar and backing vocals), Michelle Marti (bass guitar and backing vocals) and Justin Chapman (drums). The set list consists entirely of Cornwell's solo work taken from his first two albums recorded after leaving The Stranglers, Wired and Guilty, and from his 1979 collaboration with the Captain Beefheart drummer Robert Williams, Nosferatu.

The album was initially an Internet download release from 1999 on Cornwell's own label, HIS Records (Catalogue number HIS CD002) and subsequently available on the Track Records label (catalogue number TRK1019CD, released October 7, 2002).

Mayday , is a Taiwanese rock band that was formed in the late 1990s with five members, Ashin (A Shin) (lead vocals), Monster (Guai Shou) and Stone (Shi Tou) (guitar), Masa (Ma-sha) (bass guitar) and Guan You (Guan-You) (drums).

Formerly making music under the name of So Band, they came to be known as Mayday in 1997, with the name originating from Masa's online nickname. Mayday won the Golden Melody Award for Best Band in 2001, 2004, 2009 and 2012. They are known as "king of concert" in China.

Mayday, also known as Air Crash Investigation(s) in Australia, South Africa, United Kingdom, Asia and some European countries, and Air Emergency and Air Disasters in the United States, is a Canadian documentary television program produced by Cineflix investigating air crashes, near-crashes, hijackings, bombings and other disasters. Mayday uses re-enactments and computer-generated imagery to reconstruct for its audiences the sequence of events leading up to each disaster. In addition, aviation experts, retired pilots and crash investigators are interviewed explaining how these emergencies came about, how they were investigated and how they could have been prevented.

Cineflix started production on , with a CDN$2.5 million budget. Cineflix secured deals with France 5, the Discovery Channel, Canal D, TVNZ, the Seven Network, the Holland Media Group and the National Geographic Channel, to take Mayday to 144 countries and 26 languages. The series was received well by critics and nominated for a number of awards. Sharon Zupancic won a Gemini Award for her work on the Mayday episode, " Lockerbie Disaster". A UNSW senior lecturer, Raymond Lewis, conducted a study on teaching strategy loosely based on the series. Lewis's results indicated using the strategy had "a positive effect on learning outcomes."

Mayday is a band from Omaha, Nebraska, on the Saddle Creek Records label, led by Ted Stevens, also of Cursive and Lullaby for the Working Class.

Mayday or May Day usually refers to:

• Mayday, a distress signal.
• May Day, a traditional spring festival held on or around May 1.
• May Day (labor commemoration) or International Workers' Day, an international labor celebration held on May 1.

Mayday or May Day may also refer to:

Mayday is a 1979 thriller novel by American author Thomas Block. The novel was updated in 1998 by authors Thomas Block and Nelson DeMille and re-released as a paperback.

is the fourteenth single by Bump of Chicken, released on October 24, 2007. The title track is from the album Orbital Period. The single peaked at #2 on the Oricon Weekly Charts, behind , which was released on the same day. The B-side is a remix of Glass no Blues from the album Flame Vein.

Mayday is the fourth studio album by Canadian alternative rock band King Cobb Steelie, released in 2000 on Outside Music.

Crash Vegas lead Michelle McAdorey lent her singing and writing talents to the album's title track.

Mayday is the fifth studio album by new jack swing group Troop released by Warrior Records on June 16, 1998.

"Mayday" is a song by Christian hip hop recording artist Lecrae, featuring guest vocals from fellow American rapper Big K.R.I.T. and American Idol finalist, Ashthon Jones. Released on August 30, 2012, it is the fourth single off the album Gravity, which was released on September 4, 2012. The song's lyrics focus on religion, spirituality, and the role of grandmothers in developing faith and stability. It features a confession by Big K.R.I.T in which he expresses frustration with Christian hypocrisy. The song has been well received by critics and is considered one of the best songs off the album, with the lush instrumental production by DJ Khalil and the vocals by Ashthon Jones attracting particular praise. Stylistically, "Mayday" is described as having both a very "raw" and "organic" sound and R&B flow, with "chaotic" and "funky" production.

Mayday is a British drama thriller, shown on BBC One, starring Sophie Okonedo, Aidan Gillen, Peter Firth, and Lesley Manville.

Mayday is the third album by Mark Seymour and the Undertow, which was released in May 2015.

Seymour said he returned to "a very old way of writing" and acknowledged a blues influence. "I've been listening to a lot of blues and the way old blues artists reverse and invert chords, but they're always the same chords," he said. "It forces you to twist the melody. It's the illusion of simplicity, but you can create a whole lot of drama." He said his storytelling had become more narrative driven. "I invent characters or occupy the space of somebody else and imagine myself in their condition, but there's a lot of me in there."

Seymour said "FIFO" was inspired by a 62-year-old worker he met after a gig at a fly-in fly-out mining camp. "He'd been doing it for 17 years. He said, 'I'm over it, but the money's too good'." He said his lyric writing had become a lot more about location and visual detail. " Frankston station is at the end of the line and you get the full cross section of Melbourne there—all classes, every kind of person. It's tough and there's a real rawness to it. You get clarity about what urban life is really like. "Struggle Street" is interesting, the drama around it makes me think people are afraid of confronting the reality of what Australian culture is like. We want to believe that everyone is cashed up and driving four-wheel-drives, and Frankston station tells you it's not."

Mayday is a 2005 American television film, based on the 1979 thriller novel by American author Thomas Block. The novel was updated in 1998 by authors Thomas Block and Nelson DeMille and re-released as a paperback. The film stars Aidan Quinn, Gail O'Grady, Dean Cain, Charles Dutton, Michael Murphy and Kelly Hu.

"Mayday" is a song co-written and recorded by American country artist Cam for her debut major label studio album, Untamed (2015). The song was written with Tyler Johnson, who also produced the track with Jeff Bhasker and Zachary Werner. "Mayday" is a country pop song about a sinking relationship, built around a hook evoking a mayday call. It was released to country radio via Play MPE as the album's third single on January 26, 2016 before officially impacting radio on February 15, 2016.