Today is Veterans Day (originally Armistice Day) honoring military veterans of the United States Armed Forces marking the anniversary of the end of World War I.

Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 when the Armistice with Germany went into effect. At the urging of major U.S. veteran organizations, Armistice Day was renamed Veterans Day in 1954. Today may be the perfect reminder how easy it is to forget history…..no veterans from World War 1 are alive today, so keeping the enormous sacrifices some have made and experienced many years ago alive is important in our ability to not repeat the mistakes of the past.

While the holiday is commonly printed as Veteran’s Day or Veterans’ Day in calendars and advertisements, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs website states that the attributive (no apostrophe) rather than the possessive case is the official spelling “because it is not a day that ‘belongs’ to veterans, it is a day for honoring all veterans.