On November 11, Americans honor military veterans of the United States Armed Forces, who proudly served the United States of America to protect and defend freedom.
Originally known as Armistice Day, Veteran's Day remembers the sacrifices that veterans of the United States endured in military conflicts across the globe.
It was on November 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the signing of the armistice with Germany in World War I, then U.S. President Woodrow Wilson delivered a speech to Americans honoring the services of the United States Armed Forces:
"A year ago today our enemies laid down their arms in accordance with an armistice which rendered them impotent to renew hostilities, and gave to the world an assured opportunity to reconstruct its shattered order and to work out in peace a new and more just set of international relations. The soldiers and people of the European Allies had fought and endured for more than four years to uphold the barrier of civilization against the aggressions of armed force. We ourselves had been in the conflict something more than a year and a half.
With splendid forgetfulness of mere personal concerns, we remodeled our industries, concentrated our financial resources, increased our agricultural output, and assembled a great army, so that at the last our power was a decisive factor in the victory. We were able to bring the vast resources, material and moral, of a great and free people to the assistance of our associates in Europe who had suffered and sacrificed without limit in the cause for which we fought.
Out of this victory there arose new possibilities of political freedom and economic concert. The war showed us the strength of great nations acting together for high purposes, and the victory of arms foretells the enduring conquests which can be made in peace when nations act justly and in furtherance of the common interests of men.
To us in America the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service, and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of nations."
Veteran's Day is also a day of remembrance when an unknown soldier brought home to the United States from France was buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia on November 11, 1921, which later became known as the Tomb of 1921.
Every year, since the founding of the Tomb of 1921, U.S. presidents have observed Veteran's Day with commemorative speeches and reverence to every United States Armed Forces service member, both past and present.
On November 11, 2011, U.S. President Joe Biden in his Veteran's Day address to the nation described the importance of remembering America's military veterans in his National Veterans Day Observance speech:
"We lay wreaths. We renew our oaths. We stand in solemn awe of such fidelity. Because for us to keep faith with American veterans, we must never forget exactly what was given to us, what each of them was willing to put on the line for us.
And we must never forget that it is the mighty arm of the American warrior — never bending, never breaking, never yielding — generation after generation that secured for us the blessings of a nation that still stands today as the beacon of liberty, democracy, and justice around the world."