Veterans Day

When it falls

11 November every year, a federal holiday kept on the date itself. The Commonwealth keeps Remembrance Day on the same day and Remembrance Sunday on the nearest Sunday.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

The story

The armistice that ended the First World War took effect at eleven in the morning of 11 November 1918, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, and the day was kept as Armistice Day from the next year. In 1954, after the Second World War and Korea, the United States renamed it Veterans Day and widened it to everyone who has served, living and dead; Memorial Day in May remains the day of the dead.

The red poppy comes from John McCrae's poem In Flanders Fields, and is worn for the day across the Commonwealth; in the United States the poppy belongs to Memorial Day.

How the day is kept

• A wreath laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington at eleven in the morning, and two minutes' silence at the same hour across the Commonwealth.
• The Veterans Day Parade up Fifth Avenue in New York, the country's largest, with the year's honoured branch of the services leading.
• Free meals and thanks for veterans in restaurants and shops; school assemblies with veterans speaking.
• In London, the Cenotaph ceremony on Remembrance Sunday with the King, and the Festival of Remembrance at the Albert Hall the night before.

More ancestors and remembrance