Breitbart Veterans Day was first known as Armistice Day. It was established by Congress in 1926, to honor Americans who fought in World War One, which came to a victorious end with the armistice of November 11, 1918. In a White House proclamation, President Calvin Coolidge described the conflict, then known as the Great War, as “the most destructive, sanguinary, and far-reaching war in human annals.”
Yet a few years later came an even greater and more destructive war, World War Two, and soon thereafter, a smaller war in Korea. So in 1954, Congress renamed Armistice Day, by now a federal holiday, as Veterans Day to honor all veterans who served in peacetime or in wartime.
Later that year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower—himself, of course, a veteran of legend—issued a statement declaring that the whole nation should honor its vets: “To insure proper and widespread observance of this anniversary, all veterans, all veterans’ organizations, and the entire citizenry will wish to join hands in common purpose.”