On Nov. 11, 1918, the Allied nations and Germany signed an armistice ending the fighting in the Great War, which had killed more than 15 million people. A year later, King George V of England proclaimed that date Armistice Day, to be marked with two minutes of silence at 11 a.m., the hour the agreement had gone into effect.

“King Asks British to Pause Two Minutes on Armistice Day,” The New York Times wrote in a front-page headline on Nov. 7, 1919. Days later, the paper reported that Americans would be observing the day, too, with ceremonies around the country.

In a special message to the nation in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson noted the monumental changes that the fierce and bloody war had provoked. The European Allies fought for more than four years, and the Americans for more than a year and a half. None would ever be the same. The fighting had destroyed empires, transformed Europe’s borders, spurred advances in weaponry and manufacturing, and brought millions of women into the work force.

Wilson’s statement said:

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. … 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.

The Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended the war, had been signed earlier that year, on June 28, 1919.

In 1953, Alvin J. King of Emporia, Kan., proposed changing the name of the holiday to Veterans Day, to recognize veterans from all wars and conflicts. According to a 2003 congressional resolution recognizing his efforts, the holiday was first celebrated in that small city, about 60 miles southwest of Topeka, the same year.