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).
