On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month… (Picture: Getty)
Today – November 11 – is Remembrance Day, a time to pay our respect to those fallen soldiers who lost their lives in the line of duty.
Millions of poppies are sold every year by the Royal British Legion to raise money for veterans and their families in the build-up to Remembrance Day, which is officially known as Armistice Day.
Remembrance Day always falls on November 11, and there is usually a televised memorial service the following Sunday, on what we call Remembrance Sunday.
Members of the Royal Family attend these services, and this will be the first year without Queen Elizabeth II. King Charles III will instead lay a wreath at the Cenotaph in London.
There will be a national moment of silence on both of these sombre occasions. When is the silence today?
What time is the two-minute silence today?
The two-minute silence will be observed at 11am today, November 11.
It is often remembered through a memorable turn of phrase – on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
It is at this time to mark the exact moment the armistice was signed between the Allies and Germany in 1918 which brought the First World to an end.
It was signed in Compiegne, France, and forced Germans to evacuate invaded countries within a two-week period.
When did the tradition start?
The origins of the tradition can be traced back to Cape Town, South Africa, where there was a daily two-minute silence for those lost in the war across a full year from May 1918 to May 1919.
Sir James Percy FitzPatrick – a South African author and politician – had been impressed by the tradition and wrote to Colonial Secretary Lord Milner asking for it to be observed as an annual tradition across the British Empire.
King George V made it an annual tradition (Picture: Getty)
Milner brought the idea to Lord Stamfordham, the King’s Private Secretary, who then wrote to King George V supporting FitzPatrick’s notion.
The King was reportedly very enthusiastic and published a letter in The Times on November 7, 1919, declaring that on the first anniversary of the armistice, a two-minute silence would be observed.
‘At a given signal, which could easily be arranged to suit the circumstances of each locality, I believe that we shall all gladly interrupt our business and pleasure, whatever it may be, and unite in this simple service of silence and remembrance.’
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Lest we forget.
