TGIF: Where did the weekend come from?
Forever Ago
00:00
The Industrial Revolution
Most people in Britain were working at least six days a week with only Sunday off. In 1842, a group who called themselves the Early Closing Association started pushing the British government to give workers a half day off on Saturday plus Sundays off. So some people came up with an ingenious way to make their weekends longer. They stopped showing up for work on Mondays and they just didn't go? It got really popular. More and more workers started taking Mondays off. So many in fact, that factory owners worried that not enough people were showing up for Work.
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