November 11, formerly observed in the
United States in commemoration of the signing of the armistice ending World War I in 1918. Since 1954 it has been incorporated into the observances of Veterans
Day.
-- American Heritage
Dictionary, 4th Edition
EXAMPLE:
"So this book is a sidewalk strewn with junk,
trash which I throw over my shoulders as I travel in time back to November eleventh, nineteen hundred and twenty-two.
"I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred
day called Armistice
Day. When I was a boy . . . all the
people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice
Day, which was the eleventh
day of the eleventh month.
"It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of
God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when
God spoke clearly to mankind.
"Armistice
Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.
"So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I
don't want to throw away any sacred things.
"What else is sacred? Oh, "Romeo and
Juliet", for instance.
"And all music is."
-- From Kurt Vonnegut's 1973 novel "Breakfast of Champions" -- Preface (page 6).