O Armistício de Compiègne foi um tratado assinado em 11 de novembro de 1918 entre os Aliados e a Alemanha, dentro de uma carruagem de um comboio na floresta de Compiègne, com o objetivo de encerrar as hostilidades na frente ocidental da Primeira Guerra Mundial. Os principais signatários foram o Marechal Ferdinand Foch, comandante-em-chefe aliado, e Matthias Erzberger, representante alemão.
Este armistício não deve ser confundido com o Segundo Armistício de Compiègne, assinado em 1940 por representantes da França e da Alemanha Nazi.
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The remembrance poppy (a Papaver rhoeas) has been used since 1920 to commemorate soldiers who have died in war. They were first used in the United States to commemorate soldiers who died in World War I (1914–1918). Today, they are mainly used in current and former Commonwealth
states to commemorate their servicemen and women who have been killed
since 1914. In those states, small artificial poppies are often worn on
clothing on Remembrance Day/Armistice Day (11 November) and in the weeks before it. Poppy wreaths are also often laid at war memorials.
The use of the poppy was inspired by the World War I poem "In Flanders Fields".
Its opening lines refer to the many poppies that were the first flowers
to grow in the churned-up earth of soldiers' graves in Flanders, a region of Europe that overlies parts of Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. Canadian physician and Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae
is popularly believed to have written it on 3 May 1915 after witnessing
the death of his friend (a fellow soldier) the day before. The poem was
first published on 8 December 1915 in the London-based magazine Punch.
In 1918, American YWCA worker Moina Michael, inspired by the poem, published a poem of her own called "We Shall Keep the Faith". In tribute to McCrae's poem, she vowed to always wear a red poppy as a symbol of remembrance for those who served in the war.
At a November 1918 YWCA Overseas War Secretaries' conference, she
appeared with a silk poppy pinned to her coat and distributed 25 more to
those attending.
She then campaigned to have the poppy adopted as a national symbol of
remembrance. At a conference in 1920, the National American Legion
adopted it as their official symbol of remembrance.
At this conference, Frenchwoman Anna E. Guérin was inspired to
introduce the artificial poppies commonly used today. In 1921 she sent
her poppy sellers to London, where they were adopted by Field Marshal Douglas Haig, a founder of the Royal British Legion. It was also adopted by veterans' groups in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
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