Facts About Veterans Day
As Veterans Day approaches, do you know the facts surrounding the holiday that honors our veterans? Veterans Day was at first called Armistice Day, and the very first one took place on November 11, 1918. At 5AM on November 11, 1918, an armistice was signed in a railroad car parked in a French forest that was located near the front lines. According to the armistice, fighting along the Western front was to come to an end at 11AM that day. It was the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year. After four years of fighting and terrible losses of life, World War I came to an end at last.
Armistice Day was first proclaimed to be such by Congress in the year 1926. It was honored on the same day every year after that. Armistice Day was renamed “Veterans Day” due to legislation passed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954. The reason for the name change was to honor all of the brave individuals who served the nation in all conflicts and wars that had taken place and those that were to come.
Veterans Day has been observed on November 11 every year since 1978 with the exception of a very short span of time when it was marked on the fourth Monday of October.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2005 there were 24.5 million veterans in the U.S. Of these, 1.7 million are women. Five percent of World War II veterans are women while 16 percent or Persian Gulf veterans are women. There are 8.2 million veterans from the Vietnam era living in the United States.
Those who served our country deserve to be remembered and honored on Veterans Day every year. May their sacrifices never be in vain. Lest we forget.
