France and many of the Commonwealth countries, including Canada, mark the exact moment that the armistice went into effect—the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—with two minutes of silence. The emblem associated with the holiday, which is known in most of the world as Remembrance Day, is the poppy. Why? It’s not just the poppy’s blood red color. What makes the wearing of the poppy a part of the Remembrance Day tradition is its use as an ironic image by the Canadian military physician John McCrae in his poem “In Flanders Fields”  describing the now peaceful cemeteries abutting some of the war’s bloodiest battlefields.

In the U.S., November 11 is known as Veterans’ Day. But it’s not a public holiday. The Memorial Day holiday in late May/early June has replaced Veterans’ Day as the occasion that Americans commemorate the soldiers killed in battle.