Near the end of a weeklong national salute to Americans who
served in the Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial 
was dedicated in Washington, D.C. after a march to its site by
thousands of veterans of the conflict.

The long-awaited memorial was a simple V-shaped black-granite
wall inscribed with the names of the 57,939 Americans who died
in the conflict, arranged in order of death, not rank, as was
common in other memorials.

The designer of the memorial was Maya Lin, a Yale University architecture student who entered a nationwide competition to
create a design for the monument.         
        
        
        
        
        
       
Designer and sculptor Maya Ying Lin (64)

The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, a multi-day battle that would
see more than 1,700 Americans killed, began on this day in
history, Nov. 12, 1942.

Guadalcanal is the largest island in the Solomon Islands, a
country located in the Pacific Ocean northeast of Australia
and east of Papua New Guinea. 

Exactly three years after the end of World War I, the Tomb of
the Unknown Soldier was dedicated at Arlington Cemetery in
Virginia during an Armistice Day ceremony presided over by
President Warren G. Harding (below).

Warren Gamaliel Harding
(November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923)

The history of the Marine Corps began when two battalions
of Continental Marines were formed on 10 November 1775
in Philadelphia as a service branch of infantry troops
capable of fighting both at sea and on shore.