[5] Italy celebrates the Armistice with Austria on November 4 as National Unity and Armed Forces Day.

The first Armistice Day celebration was held at Buckingham Palace, commencing with King George V hosting a "Banquet in Honour of the President of the French Republic" (Raymond Poincaré)[6] during the evening hours of 10 November 1919.

The first official Armistice Day events were subsequently held in the grounds of Buckingham Palace on the morning of 11 November 1919,[7] which included a two-minute silence as a mark of respect for those who died in the war and those left behind.

In South Africa, for example, the Memorable Order of Tin Hats had by the late 1920s developed a ceremony whereby the toast of "Fallen Comrades" was observed not only in silence but darkness, all except for the "Light of Remembrance", with the ceremony ending with the Order's anthem "Old Soldiers Never Die".

Commemorations of November 11 were initially focused on honoring the military dead of the First World War and the return to peace.

Most member states of the Commonwealth of Nations followed the earlier example of Canada and adopted the name Remembrance Day.

[19] In Poland, 11 November is observed as National Independence Day, a public holiday to commemorate the anniversary of the restoration of Poland's sovereignty as the Second Polish Republic in 1918, after 123 years of partition by the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia and the Habsburg Empire.