Veterans Day

Veterans Day is an official United States public holiday, observed annually on November 11, that honors military veterans, that is, persons who served in the United States Armed Forces. It coincides with other holidays, including Armistice Day and Remembrance Day, celebrated in other countries that mark the anniversary of the end of World War I; major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, when the Armistice with Germany went into effect. The United States previously observed Armistice Day. The U.S. holiday was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.

Veterans Day is not to be confused with Memorial Day; Veterans Day celebrates the service of all U.S. military veterans, while Memorial Day honors those who died while in military service.

History

On November 11, 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson issued a message to his countrymen on the first Armistice Day in which he expressed what he felt the day meant to Americans:

Veterans Day Parade (New York)

The New York City Veterans Day Parade, which is an annual parade produced by the United War Veterans Council (UWVC), is the largest Veterans Day event in the United States of America.

The event, which is held in New York's Manhattan borough honoring living and deceased U.S. servicemen and women, begins just after 11 a.m. EST on Veterans Day.

Overview

The Veterans Day Parade in New York has been in existence since 1919.

Over 25,000 people participate in the Veterans Day Parade in New York City each year, making it the largest in the nation.

The Veterans Day commemoration begins with a wreath-laying ceremony one hour prior to the start of the parade at the Eternal Light Monument in Madison Square Park.

History

2015 Parade

Robert M. Morgenthau, the former Manhattan district attorney; United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, as well as Navy veteran, served as the parade’s Grand Marshal. Incidentally, Morgenthau was born in 1919, the same year of the first Veteran's Day Parade.

Parade

A parade (also called march or marchpast) is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind. In Britain the term parade is usually reserved for either military parades or other occasions where participants march in formation; for celebratory occasions the word procession is more usual. In the Canadian Forces the term also has several less formal connotations.

Protest demonstrations can also take the form of a parade, but such cases are usually referred to as a march instead.

Parade float

The parade float got its name because the first floats were decorated barges that were towed along canals with ropes held by parade marchers on the shore. Floats were occasionally propelled from within by concealed oarsmen, but the practice was abandoned because of the high incidence of drowning when the lightweight and unstable frames capsized. Strikingly, among the first uses of grounded floats — towed by horses — was a ceremony in memory of recently drowned parade oarsmen. Today, parade floats are traditionally pulled by motor vehicles or powered themselves.