November 11 · This Day in America
At eleven o'clock in the morning, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the First World War stops. The armistice takes effect across the Western Front and a silence rolls down the trench lines that men have not heard in over four years. Soldiers stand up cautiously into a quiet that feels unreal. More than 116,000 Americans had died in nineteen months of fighting a war the country joined late and reluctantly. A year later President Wilson asks the nation to pause on this date for those "who died in the country's service." It is first called Armistice Day. After another world war and Korea, Congress widens it in 1954 to honor every American who ever wore the uniform, and renames it Veterans Day. The hour was chosen so no one could forget the exact minute the killing ended.
Source: department.va.gov
Also on this day · 1921
Three years to the day after the armistice, a flag-draped casket moves through Washington's streets as crowds stand silent. Inside is one unidentified American killed in France, chosen to stand for all the missing. President Harding presides as the Unknown is buried at Arlington. The marble would later be carved with the words that still keep the watch: "Here Rests In Honored Glory An American Soldier Known But To God."
Source: www.arlingtoncemetery.mil
“To us in America the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service.”President Woodrow Wilson, 1919