where did the song god bless america originate
God Bless America Irving Berlin wrote the song in 1918 while serving in the U.S. Army at Camp Upton in Yaphank, New York, but decided that it did not fit in a revue called Yip Yip Yaphank, so he set it aside.[3] The lyrics at that time included the line "Make her victorious on land and foam, God bless America..."[2] as well as "Stand beside her and guide her to the right with the light from above".[4]
God bless you The practice of blessing someone who sneezes dates as far back as at least AD 77, although it is far older than most specific explanations can account for.[9] Some have offered an explanation suggesting that people once held the folk belief that a person's soul could be thrown from their body when they sneezed,[9] that sneezing otherwise opened the body to invasion by the Devil or evil spirits,[10][11] or that sneezing was the body's effort to force out an invading evil presence.[9] In these cases, "God bless you" or "bless you" is used as a sort of shield against evil.[12] The Irish Folk story "Master and Man" by Thomas Crofton Croker, collected by William Butler Yeats, describes this variation.[13] Moreover, in the past some people may have thought that the heart stops beating during a sneeze, and that the phrase "God bless you" encourages the heart to continue beating.[9][10][11]