Some dates are remembered for one thing above everything else, and November 11 is one of them: it is the day the guns of the First World War finally fell silent. But the same date also carries the Mayflower Compact, a missionary’s arrival in India, and sixteen panels of history in all. Here is the tour, the way our November 11 comic tells it.
The eleventh hour of the eleventh day
On November 11, 1918, at 11:00 in the morning, the Armistice took effect and the fighting of the First World War stopped. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month: the timing was chosen, and it has been remembered ever since. The hero story on our November 11 page is that morning, and in many countries the date is still kept with silence and remembrance at that very hour.
For a family, it is a good date to slow down with. The end of a war is not just a fact for a timeline; it was the day millions of families began to hope their sons might come home.
The same date in 1620
November 11 reaches back much further. On this date in 1620, by the calendar the Pilgrims used at the time, the men aboard the Mayflower signed the Mayflower Compact before coming ashore in the New World: a short agreement to form a government together and obey the laws they made. It is one of the founding documents of American self-government, and it happened on the same calendar square as the Armistice, just 298 years earlier.
If your family has been following our Plymouth comics this fall, this panel is where their story on paper begins. Those Plymouth comics are gathered together in our Plymouth & the Pilgrims collection.
The cobbler who sailed to India
In 1793, William Carey reached India on November 11. Carey was an English cobbler and Baptist preacher who became convinced that the church should send missionaries to the nations, and then went himself. He spent the rest of his life in India, translating the Bible and preaching, and he is often called the father of modern missions. His arrival sits quietly on this page between wars and treaties, and it may be the panel with the longest reach of all.
A day that kept going
The rest of the date runs from councils and conferences in the early centuries to battles of the Revolution and the War of 1812, including Cherry Valley in 1778 and Crysler’s Farm in 1813, and forward to the Gemini 12 spaceflight in 1966. Solemn and surprising sit side by side again, which is honest: this date carries both the end of a world war and the small beginnings of things that changed the world more quietly.
Born and died on November 11
The page closes with its born and died entries. Born on November 11: Abigail Adams, wife of one president and mother of another, and George Patton, the American general of the Second World War, along with the reformer Martin Bucer. Among those who died on this date are Nat Turner and Ned Kelly, two very different men whose stories are still argued about.
Get the comic
Our one-page comic, This Day in History: November 11, tells the whole date in panels, with the Armistice as the hero story: This Day in History: November 11 Comic for Kids. Comics Club members can download it from the library here: November 11 comic (PDF). And the date just before it in our series is here: On This Day in History: November 8, with its comic here: This Day in History: November 8 Comic for Kids.
Which November 11 story would your family sit with first: the silence at 11:00, the signing on the Mayflower, or Carey’s arrival in India?