Friday Factoids #2 … barely in time
Today’s Remembrance Day, so here are a couple of related factoids:
- Remembrance Day (or Armistice Day) is observed on November 11 to recall the end of World War I.
- Remembrance Day was created by King George V on November 7, 1919 upon the suggestion of Edward George Honey, an Australian soldier.
- The two minutes silence recalls World War I and World War II; before 1945 the silence was for one minute. (Perhaps it should be longer?)
- The (symbolism of the) poppy was introduced by a woman by the name of Madame Guerin and some suggest her idea came from John McCrae’s poem In Flanders Fields [see below].
- It’s quoted in different forms, but “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” – George Santayana
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
– John McCrae (1915)
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