Just so we call all tell Russel-hairy-beard-man to jump off a bridge. [He's close, but not quite.]
From Wikipedia. Obviously, the following is all correct.
"While the idea of a non working Sunday goes back to biblical times, the idea of two non working days at the end of every week is not very old. According to the book "Waiting for the Weekend" by Witold Rybczynski, the American concept of the weekend has its roots in labor union attempts to accommodate Jewish workers who took Saturday instead of Sunday as their Sabbath. The first five-day work week was instituted by a New England spinning mill for this reason.
In 1926 Henry Ford began shutting down his automobile factories for the entire weekend, Saturday and Sunday. Soon afterward, The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, in 1929, was the first to demand a five day work week and receive it. After that, the rest of the country slowly followed suit, but it wasn't until 1940 that the two-day weekend officially began nationwide."
Continue reading...