Anzac Day is a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand that broadly commemorates all Australians and New Zealanders "who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations" and "the contribution and suffering of all those who have served". Observed on 25 April each year, Anzac Day was originally devised to honour the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who served in the Gallipoli campaign, their first engagement in the First World War (1914–1918).
Edith Louisa Cavell was a British nurse and member of La Dame Blanche. She is celebrated for treating wounded soldiers from both sides without discrimination and for covertly helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium and return to active service during the First World War, which in wartime was a death penalty offence under the German military law. Cavell was arrested and court-martialed for that offence as an act of Kriegsverrat, found guilty, and sentenced to death by firing squad. Despite international pressure for mercy, the German Government ruled that Cavell knew that her acts were punishable; they thus refused to commute her sentence, and she was shot. Her execution, however, received worldwide condemnation and extensive global press coverage arranged by Wellington House.
Remembrance Day is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth member states since the end of the First World War to honour armed forces members who have died in the line of duty. The day is also marked by war remembrances in several other non-Commonwealth countries. In most countries, Remembrance Day is observed on 11 November to recall the end of First World War hostilities. Hostilities ended "at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month" of 1918, in accordance with the armistice signed by representatives of Germany and the Entente between 5:12 and 5:20 that morning. The First World War formally ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919.
Armistice Day, later known as Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth and Veterans Day in the United States, is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, at 5:45 am for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at 11:00 am—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918 although, according to Thomas R. Gowenlock, an intelligence officer with the U.S. First Division, shelling from both sides continued for the rest of the day, ending only at nightfall. The armistice initially expired after a period of 36 days and had to be extended several times. A formal peace agreement was reached only when the Treaty of Versailles was signed the following year.
Vimy is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de-France region of France. Located 3.8 kilometers (2.4 mi) east of Vimy is the Canadian National Vimy Memorial dedicated to the Battle of Vimy Ridge and the Canadian soldiers who were killed during the First World War. The Memorial is also the site of two Canadian cemeteries.
The Battle of Mulhouse, also called the Battle of Alsace, which began on 7 August 1914, was the opening attack of the First World War by the French Army against the German Empire. The battle was part of a French attempt to recover the province of Alsace, which France had ceded to the new empire following its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. The French occupied Mulhouse on 8 August and were then forced out by German counter-attacks on 10 August. The French retired to Belfort, where General Louis Bonneau, the VII Corps commander, was sacked, along with the commander of the 8th Cavalry Division. Events further north led to the German XIV and XV corps being moved away from Belfort and a second French offensive by the French VII Corps, reinforced and renamed the French Army of Alsace, began on 14 August.
Hartmannswillerkopf, also known as the Vieil Armand (French) or Hartmannsweiler Kopf is a pyramidal rocky spur in the Vosges mountains of the Grand Est region, France. The peak stands at 956 metres (3,136 ft) overlooking the Rhine valley. At Hartmannswillerkopf stands a national monument of World War I for the fighting which took place in the trenches here.
The St Symphorien Military Cemetery is a First World War Commonwealth War Graves Commission burial ground in Saint-Symphorien, Belgium. It contains the graves of 284 German and 229 Commonwealth soldiers, principally those killed during the Battle of Mons. The cemetery was established by the German Army on land donated by Jean Houzeau de Lehaie. It was initially designed as a woodland cemetery before being redesigned by William Harrison Cowlishaw after the Imperial War Graves Commission took over maintenance of the cemetery after the war.
Joachim Wilhelm Gauck is a German politician who served as President of Germany from 2012 to 2017. A former Lutheran pastor, he came to prominence as an anti-communist civil rights activist in East Germany.
The Holocaust in France was the persecution, deportation, and annihilation of Jews between 1940 and 1944 in occupied France, metropolitan Vichy France, and in Vichy-controlled French North Africa, during World War II. The persecution began in 1940, and culminated in deportations of Jews from France to Nazi concentration camps in Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Poland. The deportation started in 1942 and lasted until July 1944. Of the 340,000 Jews living in metropolitan/continental France in 1940, more than 75,000 were deported to death camps, where about 72,500 were murdered.
The First World War centenary was the centenary of the First World War, which began on 28 July 2014 with a series of commemorations of the outbreak of the war organised across the continent of Europe, and ended on 11 November 2018 with global commemorations of the centenary of the 1918 Armistice.
This article lists events from the year 2013 in France:
L'Anneau de la Mémoire is a World War I memorial in Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, France. Designed by Philippe Prost and inaugurated on 11 November 2014, the 96th anniversary of Armistice Day, the memorial honors the 576,606 soldiers of forty different nationalities who died at Nord-Pas-de-Calais. The memorial is located at the site of the national cemetery of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. The monument consists of 500 metal panels that are arranged in an ellipse pattern, each 3 meters in height. Each panel contains approximately 1200 names of fallen soldiers, listed alphabetically by last name. The 500th panel remains blank so that any newly discovered names may be inscribed. The most noteworthy aspect of the Ring of Memory is that it is the first memorial to list alphabetically, with no regard to rank nor nationality.
14–18 NOW was the UK's arts programme for the First World War centenary. Working with arts and heritage partners all across the UK, the programme commissioned new artworks from 420 contemporary artists, musicians, filmmakers, designers and performers, inspired by the period 1914–1918.
The Dunkirk Memorial is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorial to the missing that commemorates 4,505 missing dead of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), most of whom fell prior to and during the Battle of Dunkirk in 1939 and 1940, in the fall of France during the Second World War.
The Armistice Day centenary, signifying one hundred years since the Armistice that ended World War I on the Western Front, was marked on 11 November 2018. Commemorative events were planned in the weeks leading up to the centenary itself, including a gathering of over 70 heads of state and government in Paris. A series of Armistice Day, Remembrance Day and Veterans Day commemorations, ceremonies and speeches were held across Europe, the Commonwealth and the United States, as well as in other locations throughout the world.
The Interallied Memorial at Cointe is a war memorial built after World War I in Liège, Belgium. The memorial is a complex consisting of the Sacré-Cœur church as a religious building and a cenotaph with a tower as a secular monument.
