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

Two days before, an unknown American soldier, who had
fallen somewhere on a World War I battlefield, arrived at
the nation’s capital from a military cemetery in France.

As the soldier was lowered to his final resting place, a two-
inch layer of soil brought from France was placed below his
coffin so that he might rest forever atop the earth on which
he died.

     
    
    
    
    
   
At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the
Great War ended. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of
manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion,
signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car
outside Compiégne, France.

George Smith Patton Jr. (11 November 1885 – 21 December 1945)
was a general in the United States Army who commanded the
Seventh Army in the Mediterranean Theater of World War II, then
the Third Army in France and Germany after the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

April 9, 1945

During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress
passed a resolution stating that “two Battalions of Marines
be raised” for service as landing forces for the recently
formed Continental Navy.

The resolution, drafted by future U.S. president John Adams
and adopted in Philadelphia on November 10, 1775, created
the Continental Marines and is now observed as the birth
date of the United States Marine Corps.

John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826)