147 Fun Facts About Veterans Day

Like Veterans Day, which of these US federal holidays is fixed to a calendar date rather than a weekday?

Independence Day stays on July 4 for the same reason Veterans Day stays on November 11: the date itself is what is being marked. The other three are all set by the day of the week.

Which U.S. president signed the legislation that changed Armistice Day to Veterans Day?

Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the 1954 act that struck out 'Armistice' and wrote in 'Veterans'; later that year he issued the first Veterans Day Proclamation and set up a national committee to plan the observance.

While Veterans Day honors all who wore the uniform, Memorial Day is reserved for which group?

Those who died in service are Memorial Day's focus: it began as Decoration Day in 1868, when Union veterans called for flowers on the graves of the Civil War dead. Veterans Day thanks the living as well.

At what time of day did the World War I armistice take effect on November 11, 1918?

11:00 a.m. came six hours after the signing, the grace period the terms allowed for the fighting to stop; it made the ceasefire fall at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

Where was the World War I armistice signed on November 11, 1918?

Compiègne, France: German delegates were driven across the front line to a railway carriage on a siding in the nearby forest, where they signed before dawn three days later.

In what year did November 11 officially become a U.S. federal holiday?

An act of Congress passed on May 13, 1938 made November 11 a legal federal holiday; the day's renaming to Veterans Day came later.

The hilltop mansion at the heart of Arlington National Cemetery was once home to which Civil War general?

Robert E. Lee's wife inherited the estate; after the Union army seized it, the quartermaster general had soldiers buried close to the house in 1864, hoping to make it unlivable if the Lees ever came back.

How many steps does a Tomb Guard walk before turning at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?

A Tomb Guard takes 21 steps, faces the Tomb for 21 seconds, turns, waits another 21 seconds and walks back; the number echoes the 21-gun salute, the highest military honor.

Before the round-the-clock watch began in 1937, soldiers guarded the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier only when?

In daylight: soldiers from Fort Myer were posted in 1926 to stop visitors climbing or stepping on the Tomb, which a few had even used as a picnic spot. The watch has not lapsed since 1937.

Which U.S. Army unit is responsible for guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?

The 3rd Infantry Regiment, 'The Old Guard', took over the watch in April 1948, when it was reactivated as the Army's official ceremonial unit; its soldiers also escort Arlington's funerals.

Which First World War field marshal helped found the British Legion, whose 1921 appeal first sold remembrance poppies in Britain?

Douglas Haig, who had commanded Britain's armies on the Western Front, gave his last years to ex-servicemen, helping to set up the Legion and raising money for it until his death in 1928.

Who wrote the famous poem "In Flanders Fields" that inspired the remembrance poppy?

John McCrae, an army doctor, is said to have written it the day after burying his friend Alexis Helmer in May 1915; by legend he threw the draft away and fellow soldiers rescued it.

America's Unknown Soldier lay in state in which Washington building before the 1921 burial at Arlington?

The U.S. Capitol's Rotunda received the casket on November 9, 1921; tens of thousands of mourners filed past the next day, before a horse-drawn caisson carried it across the Potomac to Arlington.

In the 1970s Veterans Day was briefly moved off November 11 under which federal law?

The Uniform Monday Holiday Act of 1968 shifted several holidays to Mondays to give federal workers three-day weekends; many states simply kept Veterans Day on November 11 until Congress gave way.

For most of the 1970s, Veterans Day was moved off November 11 to a date in which month?

October hosted Veterans Day from 1971 to 1977; many states kept November 11 anyway, and Congress gave way, restoring the original date from 1978.

Which president proclaimed the first Armistice Day on November 11, 1919?

Woodrow Wilson's message spoke of 'solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service'; the first observance was planned around parades, public meetings and a brief pause in business.

Which military branch celebrates its birthday on November 10, just one day before Veterans Day?

The U.S. Marine Corps dates its birth to November 10, 1775, when Congress raised the Continental Marines; at each birthday ball, pieces of cake are presented to the oldest and the youngest Marine present.

Which ceremony opens the national Veterans Day observance each November 11?

A wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns starts it, and the observance then moves inside the Memorial Amphitheater for a parade of colors and remarks from dignitaries.

The first Unknown Soldier interred at Arlington's Tomb died in which conflict?

The 1921 Unknown was a World War I soldier, chosen by Sergeant Edward Younger from four identical caskets at Châlons-sur-Marne, France, on October 24, 1921.

Which monarch's abdication was announced on 9 November 1918, two days before the armistice was signed?

Kaiser Wilhelm II had not yet agreed when his chancellor, Max von Baden, announced the abdication to calm a revolution in the capital; he went into exile in the Netherlands and died there in 1941.

Which Alabama city, home of organizer Raymond Weeks, staged a celebration for all veterans on Armistice Day 1947?

Birmingham held a parade on November 11, 1947, after Weeks took his plan for a day honoring every veteran to Washington; he ran the celebration each year until his death in 1985.

Roughly how many living military veterans did the United States have in 2023?

About 16 million veterans were counted in the Census Bureau's 2023 survey, some 6% of adults; in 1980 the share was about 18%, and it has shrunk ever since the draft ended in 1973.

Why do Tomb Guards walking the mat wear no rank insignia?

So as not to outrank the Unknowns: nobody can say what rank the men in the crypts held, so the sentinel pacing in front of them shows none at all.

Where in the United States is the National WWI Museum and Memorial located?

Kansas City, Missouri, raised more than $2.5 million for a war memorial in under two weeks in 1919; its Liberty Memorial was dedicated in 1926 and named the national World War I museum by Congress in 2004.

In which magazine was "In Flanders Fields" first published in 1915?

"In Flanders Fields" was first published on December 8, 1915, in the British magazine Punch after being rejected by The Spectator.

Which country observes November 11 as National Independence Day rather than a veterans' commemoration?

November 11, 1918 was the day Poland regained sovereignty after 123 years of partition by Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia.

What ceremony takes place daily at the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium, to honor fallen soldiers?

The Last Post was first sounded under the gate in 1928 and has closed every day since May 1929, except under German occupation, when the ceremony moved to a cemetery in England; it returned the evening Ypres was freed in 1944.

In 2023, roughly what share of the U.S. adult civilian population were veterans?

Veterans made up about 6% of the U.S. adult civilian population in 2023; fewer than 1% of them had served in World War II, and about 1.7 million were women.

Which president presided over the interment of the first Unknown Soldier at Arlington in 1921?

President Warren G. Harding presided over the interment on November 11, 1921; at the same ceremony Admiral of the Fleet Lord Beatty presented Britain's Victoria Cross on behalf of King George V.

On which shoulder does a Tomb sentinel carry the rifle while walking the mat?

The sentinel always carries the rifle on the shoulder away from the Tomb, placing the guard between the Tomb and any threat; the weapon changes shoulders at each turn.

Which US military decoration did the World War I Unknown Soldier receive at his 1921 interment at Arlington?

The Medal of Honor was laid on the casket by the president himself; Britain added its Victoria Cross, returning a compliment, since America had given its top medal to Britain's Unknown Warrior weeks earlier.

What three figures are depicted on the marble sarcophagus of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?

Peace, Victory and Valor stand on the east face, looking toward Washington; they arrived a decade late, since until the sarcophagus was added in 1932 the Tomb was only a plain marble slab.

Unknown Soldiers from which two conflicts were simultaneously interred at Arlington on May 30, 1958?

WWII and Korea each supplied an Unknown in 1958: aboard the cruiser Canberra a Navy corpsman chose between two WWII caskets, and the one he passed over was buried at sea.

A South African's 1919 proposal for the Armistice Day silence drew on a wartime noon pause in which city?

Cape Town had kept a silence at noon during the war; the idea was put to King George V, who asked the whole Empire to pause on 11 November 1919. Australia credits a Melbourne journalist's letter with the idea instead.

A viral rumor, denied by the Tomb Guards' own society, claims sentinels must give up what for life?

Alcohol: the chain email also claims guards live under the Tomb for two years. The society calls it a false rumor: the average tour is about 18 months, and sentinels live in barracks or off post.

Natalie's ramonda, a mountain flower that revives after drying out, is the Armistice Day emblem of which Balkan country?

Serbia adopted the flower, named after its Queen Natalija, in 2012: a plant that comes back to life when watered stood for a country whose army suffered the heaviest casualty rate of the First World War.

In France, where is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier located?

The Arc de Triomphe has sheltered France's Unknown Soldier since 11 November 1920; the flame over his grave, first lit three years later, is rekindled by veterans every evening at 6:30.

What did the original Armistice Day law declare November 11 should be dedicated to?

The cause of world peace was what the 1938 act dedicated November 11 to, in those words; barely sixteen months later Europe was at war again.

About how many casualties did the armies suffer on the final day of World War I?

About 11,000 men were killed, wounded or missing on 11 November 1918, more than on D-Day by one historian's count; attacks went on all morning although the armistice had been signed before dawn.

Under the 1918 armistice, Allied troops occupied German land west of which river?

The Rhine's west bank and bridgeheads on the far side were occupied within weeks; the armistice itself was only a ceasefire, renewed three times before the peace took effect in January 1920.

Which bugle call is sounded at U.S. military funerals and Veterans Day ceremonies?

Taps dates from July 1862, when Union general Daniel Butterfield, recovering from a wound in Virginia, had his bugler try a new lights-out call in place of the borrowed French one; within months both armies were using it.

Which U.S. holiday, on the third Saturday of May, honors those currently serving in the military?

Armed Forces Day was announced in 1949, after the services were merged under one Defense Department, as a single day to stand in for the separate Army, Navy and Air Force days.

Which peace treaty, signed on 28 June 1919, formally ended World War I between the Allies and Germany?

The Treaty of Versailles was signed in the Hall of Mirrors, the room where the German Empire had been proclaimed in 1871, and five years to the day after the Sarajevo assassination that set the war off.

What nationality was the army doctor who wrote "In Flanders Fields"?

Canadian: he was serving as a surgeon with Canada's first division at Ypres in spring 1915, when it held its line through the war's first large-scale gas attack.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier's inscription says an American soldier rests there "known but to" whom?

God: the line, cut into the west face, reads 'Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God'. For its first decade the Tomb was only a plain marble slab, until the sarcophagus came in 1932.

Which president awarded Raymond Weeks the Presidential Citizens Medal in 1982 as the driving force behind Veterans Day?

Ronald Reagan honored him at the White House in 1982; Weeks led the first national celebration in Alabama in 1947 and organised one every year until his death in 1985.

By 2023 Census figures, which service period accounts for the most living U.S. veterans?

Vietnam War veterans were 33% of the total in the Census Bureau's 2023 figures, ahead of the post-9/11 group at 28%; the VA, which counts everyone since 1990 as one Gulf War era, puts that era first instead.

Which president signed the 1975 law that returned Veterans Day to its original date?

Gerald Ford signed Public Law 94-97 in September 1975 because most state legislatures and every major veterans' group wanted November 11 back; the change took effect in 1978.

Who was nicknamed the "Poppy Lady from France" for organizing the first Poppy Days?

Anna Guérin wanted every Allied nation to wear artificial poppies made by French widows and orphans, the proceeds going to France's war-ravaged regions; she won over the American Legion's 1920 convention.

Which American teacher vowed in 1918 to always wear a red poppy in remembrance?

Moina Michael answered 'In Flanders Fields' with a poem of her own, 'We Shall Keep the Faith', then spent years urging veterans' groups to adopt the poppy and sell it to help disabled servicemen.

What colour poppy did Britain's Co-operative Women's Guild introduce in 1933?

The white poppy, first sold by the Co-operative Women's Guild in 1933, is worn as a pacifist alternative alongside or instead of the red poppy; a purple poppy later appeared for animals killed in war.

In France, what is worn in place of the remembrance poppy each 11 November?

France's emblem is the cornflower, the bleuet de France, whose blue echoes the horizon-blue uniforms worn by French infantrymen in the First World War.

Under what name has the VFW distributed its remembrance poppies since registering the trademark in 1924?

Buddy Poppy was registered with the U.S. Patent Office in February 1924; two years earlier the VFW had become the first veterans' group to run a nationwide poppy drive, while the American Legion was briefly wearing the daisy instead.

The Royal British Legion's Poppy Factory is in which English town?

The Poppy Factory is in Richmond, south-west London; founded in 1922 by Major George Howson to employ disabled ex-servicemen, it moved to Richmond in 1926 and also makes the wreaths laid at the Cenotaph.

In which country are remembrance poppies mostly worn on Anzac Day rather than 11 November?

In New Zealand the poppy is worn on Anzac Day: a 1921 shipment of French poppies arrived too late for Armistice Day, so the first Poppy Day was held just before Anzac Day in April 1922, and the date stuck.

Anzac Day, when Australia and New Zealand honor their veterans, marks a 1915 landing on which peninsula?

Gallipoli ended in evacuation, not victory, yet the landing of 25 April 1915 became central to how both nations see themselves; the first Anzac Day services and marches were held just a year later.

Which mayor began the daily two-minute pause in May 1918 that inspired the Remembrance silence?

Mayor Sir Harry Hands began the pause on 14 May 1918 after his own son was killed; a three-minute trial was judged too long, so he cut it to two — one minute of thanks, one for the fallen.

Which architect designed the Cenotaph on Whitehall, unveiled in 1920?

Edwin Lutyens first built it in wood and plaster for the July 1919 victory parade; so many mourners came to lay wreaths that a permanent copy in Portland stone was unveiled on 11 November 1920.

The word "cenotaph" derives from Greek words meaning what?

Cenotaph comes from the Greek kenos (empty) and taphos (tomb): an 'empty tomb'. Most of Britain's war dead were buried near where they fell, so the monument stands for their absence.

Britain's Unknown Warrior was buried on 11 November 1920 in which building?

Westminster Abbey laid him in soil brought from the battlefields of France, under a slab of black Belgian marble that is the only gravestone in the building nobody may walk on.

Since a 1923 wedding, royal brides have traditionally left what on the grave of Britain's Unknown Warrior?

Their bridal bouquet: Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future Queen Mother, laid hers on the grave on her way in to be married, in memory of a brother killed in 1915; later royal brides have sent theirs back after the service.

Which destroyer carried the Unknown Warrior from Boulogne to Dover in November 1920?

HMS Verdun was picked because her name was a tribute to the French and their army's stand at Verdun in 1916; a French marshal saluted the casket on the Boulogne quayside before she sailed.

The 1918 armistice carriage, reused for France's 1940 surrender, was then hauled to which city as a war trophy?

Berlin put the carriage on show beside the Brandenburg Gate within weeks, while the forest clearing where both armistices had been signed was torn up on the victors' orders.

Who had the 1918 armistice carriage put back on its exact spot for France's 1940 surrender?

Adolf Hitler had the carriage hauled back to the clearing for the armistice of 22 June 1940; he sat in the chair the French marshal had used in 1918, then walked out as the marshal had done, leaving General Keitel to finish.

What finally became of the original 1918 armistice carriage?

Destroyed in wartime Germany, in Thuringia in 1945: the SS is usually blamed, though the museum at the clearing records an accidental fire; the carriage shown there today is a sister car from the same series.

What happened in 1921 to the German politician who had signed the 1918 armistice?

Assassinated by right-wing extremists: two gunmen from the Organisation Consul terror group shot him on a walk in the Black Forest; his name on the armistice had made him a hate figure for the nationalist right.

Henry Gunther, possibly the war's last man killed, died at what time on 11 November 1918?

Private Henry Gunther was shot dead at 10:59 a.m. as he charged a German machine-gun post near Chaumont-devant-Damvillers, despite the Germans trying to wave him off; the Army later restored his sergeant's rank.

Which Kansas town did Congress declare the founding city of Veterans Day in 2003?

Emporia celebrated its 1953 Armistice Day as 'Veterans Day' at resident Alvin King's urging; its congressman, Ed Rees, then carried the renaming bill through Congress the following year.

What name was given to the thousands of jobless World War I veterans who camped in Washington in 1932?

The Bonus Army wanted early payment of service certificates not due until 1945. Troops under Douglas MacArthur drove the marchers out and burned their camps; Congress finally paid in 1936, over a presidential veto.

Why does the VA say Veterans Day takes no apostrophe?

It is not a day that belongs to veterans, the VA explains, but one for honoring them all; Mother's Day went the other way, its founder insisting on the singular possessive so each family would honor its own mother.

The remembrance lines beginning 'They shall grow not old' come from which 1914 poem?

For the Fallen was written by Laurence Binyon on a clifftop in Cornwall and printed that September, just seven weeks into a war that still had four years to run.

In 1989 the Veterans Administration was promoted to what rank in the US government?

Cabinet department: the law was signed in 1988 and took effect in March 1989, giving the agency's head a seat in the president's cabinet; its workforce is second only to the Defense Department's.

Which president merged three agencies into the Veterans Administration in 1930?

Herbert Hoover's executive order merged the Veterans' Bureau, the Pension Bureau and the soldiers' homes into one agency; two years later he sent the Army to clear protesting veterans out of Washington.

The 1944 Servicemen's Readjustment Act is better known as what?

G.I. Bill: signed on June 22, 1944, it covered almost anyone with 90 days of wartime service, offering paid tuition, cheap mortgages and business loans, and put higher education within reach of millions of veterans.

The American Legion was founded in March 1919 at a caucus held in which city?

About a thousand officers and men of the American Expeditionary Forces met in Paris on 15–17 March 1919 to form the Legion; a St. Louis caucus followed in May and Congress chartered it that September.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars grew out of societies formed by veterans of which war?

Its earliest ancestor was formed in Columbus, Ohio, in 1899 by men home from the Spanish–American War, many of them sick or wounded and facing no medical care or pension from the government.

Which cruiser brought the World War I Unknown Soldier home from France in 1921?

USS Olympia, the cruiser that had fought at Manila Bay in 1898, carried the casket from Le Havre to the Washington Navy Yard, arriving on November 9, 1921; the three unchosen unknowns were reburied in the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery.

The cruiser that carried the WWI Unknown home had been whose flagship at Manila Bay?

Commodore George Dewey commanded from the cruiser's bridge at Manila Bay on 1 May 1898, giving the famous order 'You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.'

How did Sergeant Edward Younger mark his choice of the WWI Unknown from four caskets in 1921?

Placing white roses on it: the spray he laid on one of four identical caskets in the city hall at Châlons settled the choice, and the three not chosen were buried in an American war cemetery in France.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier's sarcophagus was carved from which American marble?

Yule marble comes from a quarry high above the Colorado town of Marble; its seam can yield huge flawless blocks, and the Tomb's 56-ton main piece was the largest single block of marble quarried up to then.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier's carvers also cut the statue inside which memorial?

Lincoln Memorial: Daniel Chester French designed the seated figure, but the Piccirilli brothers cut it from 28 blocks of marble in their Bronx studio; a decade later they carved the Tomb's figures.

The six wreaths on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier's side panels came to represent what?

Major US battles in France is the usual reading of the six wreaths; the design came from an open competition, won by an architect and a sculptor who were both veterans of the First World War.

The Vietnam Unknown, identified by DNA in 1998, was an officer of which service?

The Vietnam Unknown was Air Force First Lieutenant Michael Blassie, an A-37 pilot shot down near An Loc in May 1972; a POW/MIA activist's newsletter and a CBS report forced the 1998 exhumation.

Which word completes the inscription on the emptied Vietnam crypt, "America's ___ Servicemen 1958–1975"?

Missing: after DNA gave the Vietnam Unknown his name back in 1998, officials left the crypt empty and rededicated it the next year to every American still unaccounted for from that war.

How often is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier guard changed in summer opening hours?

Every half-hour from April through September, and hourly the rest of the year; at each change the relief commander gives the incoming sentinel's rifle a white-glove inspection in front of the crowd.

The Tomb sentinels' rubber mat is replaced before Veterans Day and which other holiday?

The mat is replaced twice a year, before Memorial Day and before Veterans Day; the guards' shoes have metal plates in the soles, which chew up the rubber and produce the signature heel click.

Which president attended the Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington just eleven days before his own death?

John F. Kennedy came to Arlington's Veterans Day service on November 11, 1963, and was shot in Dallas on November 22; days later he was buried at Arlington himself, beside an eternal flame.

Which two Army badges are rarer than the Tomb Guard Identification Badge?

The Tomb Guard badge ranks third-rarest among Army badges: only the Army Astronaut Badge and the Military Horseman Identification Badge, worn by the Old Guard's Caisson Platoon, have been awarded to fewer soldiers.

Before 1931, Canada's Armistice Day was held on the same Monday as which other holiday?

Thanksgiving shared the Monday of the week of 11 November with Armistice Day from 1921, which confused the public and angered veterans; in 1931 Parliament gave the war dead a fixed date and a new name.

Which three Canadian provinces leave Remembrance Day off their lists of statutory holidays?

Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec leave it off, while Nova Scotia covers the day in a separate act; the Royal Canadian Legion has itself opposed a national day off, arguing that schools in session can teach what the day means.

Canada's Unknown Soldier, interred in Ottawa in 2000, came from a grave near which battle?

He was exhumed in May 2000 from Cabaret-Rouge British Cemetery near Souchez, close to Vimy Ridge, where Canadian troops fought in April 1917, and reburied at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.

Germany's national day of mourning, Volkstrauertag, falls on which Sunday?

Volkstrauertag falls two Sundays before the first Sunday of Advent, in mid-November; the modern form dates from 1952, after the Nazis had replaced the day with Heldengedenktag, a 'heroes' memorial day' in Lent.

The Dutch Veteranendag, held the last Saturday of June, marks the birthday of which royal?

Prince Bernhard, born on 29 June 1911, died in December 2004; the Dutch government fixed the first Veteranendag on his birthday the following June as a tribute, and it later moved to the last Saturday of June.

Italy's national military holiday on 4 November marks its 1918 armistice with which power?

The Armistice of Villa Giusti with Austria-Hungary took effect on 4 November 1918, ending fighting on the Italian front a week before the Western Front armistice; the day lost public-holiday status in 1977.

The deadly Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940 struck which part of the United States?

The Upper Midwest woke to a morning so mild that duck hunters went out in shirtsleeves; by afternoon a blizzard had caught them along the Mississippi, and Collegeville, Minnesota ended up under 27 inches of snow.

In Britain, where were the first official Armistice Day events held on 11 November 1919?

Buckingham Palace hosted them: King George V gave a banquet for French president Raymond Poincaré on the evening of 10 November, and the next morning's ceremony in the palace grounds included a two-minute silence.

The remembrance phrase "Lest we forget" comes from which Rudyard Kipling poem?

Recessional was written for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 as a sober reminder that empires pass; only after the First World War did its refrain, 'Lest we forget', come to mean the war dead.

Which rock and roll star was drafted in 1958 and served with an Army tank battalion in West Germany?

Elvis Presley could have joined Special Services and kept performing, but he was persuaded to serve as a regular soldier. He came home a sergeant in 1960.

Irene Triplett, who died in 2020, was the last American to collect a pension from which war?

The Civil War was still costing the US government $73.13 a month in 2020. Her father, Mose Triplett, fought for both sides and married her mother in his late seventies.

Which Golden Girls star enlisted in the Marines in 1943 and worked as a truck driver and dispatcher?

Bea Arthur was one of the first members of the Marines' wartime Women's Reserve. She started as a typist in Washington, then asked for a transfer to motor transport school.

Which stray dog, smuggled to France by a soldier in 1917, has been called the Great War's most decorated war dog?

Stubby warned his unit of gas attacks and caught a German spy, which got him nominated for the rank of sergeant. He had been found wandering Yale's campus, where the 102nd Infantry trained.

Which Ohio city takes its name from a hereditary society founded in 1783 by officers of the Continental Army?

Cincinnati was called Losantiville until the territorial governor, a member of the veterans' society, renamed it. The society honors Cincinnatus, the Roman who gave up power to return to his farm.

Which beloved public television host spent twenty years in the Air Force, rising to master sergeant in Alaska?

Bob Ross first saw snow and mountains at Eielson Air Force Base, and they filled his landscapes ever after. He took up painting at an art class in an Anchorage U.S.O. club.

Which Manhattan thoroughfare hosts New York City's Veterans Day Parade, billed as the nation's largest?

Fifth Avenue is the city's traditional parade route, shared with the St. Patrick's Day march. The veterans' parade is organized by the United War Veterans Council.

Which Native American nation's language formed a code that Marines used to pass messages across the Pacific?

Navajo had no word for submarine, so the code talkers called it an iron fish. The idea came from Philip Johnston, a missionary's son who learned the language as a boy on the reservation.

What kind of animal was Cher Ami, a wounded American Army messenger of 1918 awarded the French Croix de Guerre?

A homing pigeon, Cher Ami reached his loft with a leg shot away and the message still dangling from it. His preserved body is on display at the Smithsonian.

Which country singer served as an Air Force Morse code operator intercepting Soviet transmissions in West Germany?

Johnny Cash was said to be one of the first Americans to learn of Stalin's death, picking the news up in Morse code. He also formed his first band on the base, the Landsberg Barbarians.

If Veterans Day lands on a Saturday, on which day do most federal employees take the holiday instead?

Friday becomes the day off for Monday-to-Friday federal workers, while a Sunday holiday is observed the next day. The legal holiday itself stays fixed on the anniversary of the 1918 ceasefire.

Which president signed the G.I. Bill into law sixteen days after Allied troops landed in Normandy?

Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill first drafted by Harry Colmery, a former American Legion commander. It paid returning troops' tuition and living costs and offered them low-cost mortgages.

Which president's Second Inaugural Address supplies the promise to care for veterans that the VA takes as its mission?

Abraham Lincoln made the pledge in March 1865, the day after Congress voted for a national home for disabled volunteer soldiers. In 2023 the VA reworded its mission to add families, caregivers and survivors.

Which US decoration for troops wounded in action was revived on the 200th anniversary of George Washington's birth?

The Purple Heart descends from a purple cloth heart that Washington created in 1782 and gave to just three soldiers. It is the oldest military award still given to American troops.

Which US armed service operates under the Department of Homeland Security rather than the Pentagon in peacetime?

The Coast Guard can be transferred to the Navy in wartime, as it was in 1941. Before Homeland Security existed it answered to the Department of Transportation.

Which comedian did Congress make an honorary veteran of the armed forces in 1997 for decades of entertaining troops?

Bob Hope, who was born in England, made 57 tours for the USO between 1941 and 1991. They took him to troops from the Second World War through to the Persian Gulf War.

Which Yale undergraduate won the 1981 design contest for the black granite wall of names on the National Mall?

Maya Lin beat more than 1,400 other entries in a contest judged blind. She later said she would never have won had the jury seen her name rather than a number.

Which Kansas senator, badly wounded in Italy in 1945, chaired the campaign to build the National World War II Memorial?

Bob Dole was hit by a German shell that shattered his collarbone and part of his spine, leaving him little use of his right arm. The memorial he raised funds for opened in 2004.

Which Pacific island's 1945 flag-raising is cast in bronze at a giant Marine memorial overlooking Washington, D.C.?

Iwo Jima's flag-raising was photographed by Joe Rosenthal. Sculptor Felix de Weldon, then serving in the Navy, modeled his first version of it in a single weekend.

Which nickname is often given to the 1950–53 Korean War, whose veterans' memorial sets 19 steel soldiers on patrol?

The Forgotten War got its name because it drew so much less public attention than the wars before and after it. Its memorial in Washington was not dedicated until 1995.

Which guitar legend trained as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell before his music career took off?

Jimi Hendrix enlisted in 1961 after being given a choice between prison and the Army. He soon asked his father to mail his guitar to the base, and he was discharged the following year.

Which Hollywood leading man flew B-24 bombers from England and retired from the Air Force Reserve as a general?

James Stewart spent more than a year training other pilots before he talked his commander into a combat posting. He stayed in the reserves for two decades after the war, retiring in 1968.

Which Arizona Cardinals safety left the NFL to enlist in the Army after the September 11 attacks and became a Ranger?

Pat Tillman had already turned down a five-year, $9 million offer from the St. Louis Rams out of loyalty to his team. He enlisted alongside his brother Kevin and was killed in Afghanistan in 2004.

Which baseball Hall of Famer twice interrupted his career to serve as a Marine pilot, in two different wars?

Ted Williams flew 39 combat missions in the early 1950s, at least one of them as wingman to John Glenn. The future astronaut called him one of the best pilots he knew.

Which future president served as a Navy submarine officer and helped dismantle a damaged reactor in Canada in 1952?

Jimmy Carter led a crew whose members were lowered into the Chalk River reactor for 90 seconds at a time to limit their exposure. He was then working under Admiral Hyman Rickover.

Which future president bailed out of his stricken Navy bomber over the Pacific and was rescued by a submarine?

George H. W. Bush was the only one of his three-man crew to survive the attack on Chichijima. For decades he was thought to have been the Navy's youngest aviator of the war.

Which Army doctor who confirmed that mosquitoes spread yellow fever gives his name to the military's Bethesda hospital?

Walter Reed led the 1901 team that proved a theory first proposed by the Cuban doctor Carlos Finlay. The Bethesda complex named for him was dedicated in 2011 on the grounds of the Navy's hospital.

Which historically Black institute gave its name to America's first Black military pilots, who trained nearby?

Tuskegee pilots painted the tails of their fighters red, and the nickname Red Tails stuck. Later in the war they flew escort for heavy bombers over Europe.

Which Army chief of staff led the troops and tanks that drove the Bonus Army of jobless veterans out of Washington?

Douglas MacArthur moved against some 17,000 veterans who had come to demand early payment of a wartime service bonus. The marchers and their families were driven out and their shelters burned.

Which Navy rear admiral pioneered the ideas behind COBOL, one of the first high-level programming languages?

Grace Hopper retired from the Naval Reserve at 60 and was twice called back to active duty. She had managed the development of one of the first COBOL compilers.

Which New York neighborhood gave its name to the Hellfighters, a Black regiment that spent 191 days in the trenches?

Harlem's regiment spent longer in the front line than any other American unit of the war. It fought attached to the French Army, whose soldiers called its men the Men of Bronze.

Soldiers of which ancestry filled the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, famed as the most decorated unit in US history?

Japanese American volunteers filled the regiment, most of them from Hawaii. Many of the mainland recruits signed up from internment camps where their families were still held.

Which wartime corps of women pilots, who ferried and tested military aircraft, waited until 1977 for veteran status?

The WASP were treated as federal employees rather than soldiers, though 38 of them died on duty. Their service records stayed sealed until the year they finally won recognition.

Which abolitionist led 150 Black Union soldiers on an 1863 river raid that freed more than 750 enslaved people?

Harriet Tubman had been sent to the Sea Islands a year earlier to nurse and teach people who had escaped slavery. Many of those she helped free on the Combahee River then joined the Union Army.

Which two-word term entered medical journals in 1915 for the battlefield trauma now understood as post-traumatic stress?

Shell shock took its name from an assumed link with exploding artillery shells, and first appeared in print in The Lancet. Commanders long dismissed lasting cases as cowardice.

In Army paperwork of the early 1900s, the initials G.I. on buckets and trash cans stood for which two words?

Galvanized iron was the first meaning, as in the G.I. can, a metal trash can. The soldiers' nickname came later and is usually traced to government issue instead.

Which nickname, of uncertain origin, was given to the American infantrymen who fought in France in 1917 and 1918?

Doughboys had long been a word for the fried flour dumplings eaten by Nelson's sailors and Wellington's soldiers. The nickname lasted into the early 1940s, when G.I. replaced it.

Which news anchor's 1998 book popularized the phrase the Greatest Generation for Americans who fought World War II?

Tom Brokaw took the idea from covering the 40th anniversary of D-Day. His book profiles people raised in the Great Depression who went on to fight or to work on the home front.

The word veteran reached English around 1500 from the Latin vetus, which carries what meaning?

Old is the root sense, and the Romans used the word of long-serving cattle and vines as well as soldiers. The same Latin root gives English the word inveterate.

On the service flag that military families hang in a window, which color star marks a relative who died in service?

Gold marks a death, while a blue star stands for each relative serving in wartime. The banner was designed in 1917 by an Ohio infantry captain in honor of his two sons in the Army.

Which World War II cartoonist does Snoopy set off to visit in Peanuts strips published on Veterans Day?

Bill Mauldin drew Willie and Joe, two weary infantrymen, and won a Pulitzer at 23. Charles Schulz, a veteran of the same war, sent Snoopy round to drink root beers with him in 17 strips.

Which Oscar-winning 1946 film follows three servicemen readjusting to civilian life after World War II?

The Best Years of Our Lives cast Harold Russell, a veteran who had lost both hands, as a sailor with the same injury. He won two Oscars for the one role, the only time that has happened.

Which World War II general, nicknamed the GI's general, ran the Veterans Administration for two years after the war?

Omar Bradley was appointed by President Truman, and the VA secretary's main conference room is named in his honor. In 1950 he became the last American promoted to five-star rank.

Which fraternal order of Union veterans dissolved in 1956 when its last member, Albert Woolson, died?

The Grand Army of the Republic peaked at 410,000 members in 1890 and lobbied Congress into paying regular veterans' pensions. Woolson had joined a Minnesota artillery regiment as a drummer boy.

Which Virginia town, home of the National D-Day Memorial, lost 19 of its men on the first day in Normandy?

Bedford suffered proportionately the greatest losses of any American town in the campaign, which is why Congress placed the memorial there. Its men served together in one National Guard company.

Which teenage Army ambulance driver in France lived to be the last surviving American veteran of the Great War?

Frank Buckles enlisted at 16 and died in West Virginia in 2011, aged 110. During the next world war he spent more than three years as a civilian prisoner in the occupied Philippines.

Which Nordic country keeps National Veterans' Day on April 27, the date its last war ended in 1945?

Finland marks the day its soldiers raised their flag at the border cairn it shares with two neighbors, ending the Lapland War. The observance itself dates only from 1987.

Which state's National Guard holds the oldest units in the US military, descended from militia regiments formed in 1636?

Massachusetts Bay's General Court ordered the colony's militia into three permanent regiments on December 13, 1636. Four present-day units of the state's Guard descend from them.

Which woman fought in the Continental Army disguised as a man and later gave a lecture tour about her service?

Deborah Sampson enlisted as Robert Shurtleff and, when shot in the thigh, cut the ball out herself with a penknife rather than let a doctor examine her. A later fever gave her away.

Which president, who enlisted as a private in 1861, was the last Union Army veteran to hold the office?

William McKinley was the only president to begin that war as an enlisted man, finishing it a brevet major. His regimental commander and mentor was Rutherford B. Hayes, who reached the White House first.