It’s Veterans Day (or Remembrance Day in places like Canada and the UK), but for a while, this holiday had a different name: Armistice Day. It was established to celebrate the end of World War I, which came 96 years ago at 11 a.m. along Europe’s Western Front on November 11, 1918 (“the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month”).

The armistice that ended World War I (known for years as The Great War) was signed in a railroad car outside Compiègne, France, as Germany faced up to its impossible position after four years of trench warfare against the Allied Powers and finally laid down its weapons. The armistice was signed at 5 a.m., but gunfire continued right up to the war’s official end at 11 a.m. An American soldier named Henry Gunther is generally recognized as the last man to die in World War I. He was killed one minute before the armistice went into effect…one of more than 2,700 deaths on the last day of the war.

The war decimated Europe, bleeding each of the Great Powers of a million men apiece, and that’s before tallying the deaths from starvation, disease, and cold. Its end was as much cause for relief as celebration…and the holiday that commemorated its armistice was intended to be a reminder of the need to preserve the peace. But that peace was short-lived, and the holiday was renamed in most countries around the time of World War II. British Commonwealth countries chose Remembrance Day, while the US went with All Veterans Day, since shortened to Veterans Day. (Four countries still recognize Armistice Day.)

World War I is nearly a century behind us now, and its carnage has been sadly replaced with no shortage of more recent bloodshed. But for the world in 1918, November 11 was blessed relief…a chance to tally up the butcher’s bill without seeing it extended, a chance to mourn, to try to rebuild, and to hope for a peace that we still look for on this day for remembrance, this day for veterans…this Armistice Day.

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