Two-minute silence

The Remembrance Day silence originates in Cape Town, South Africa where there was a daily three-minute silence, known as the Three Minute Pause, initiated by the daily firing of the noon day gun on Signal Hill. This was instituted by the then Cape Town Mayor, Sir Harry Hands, on 14 May 1918: one minute was a time of thanksgiving for those who had returned alive, the second minute was to remember the fallen. During the silence a bugler played the Last Post and then Reveille to signal the end of the silence. A Reuters correspondent in Cape Town cabled a description of the event to London and from there word spread to Canada and Australia. Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, writing to Lord Milner in November 1919 described the silence that fell on the city during this daily ritual, and proposed that this became an official part of the annual service on Armistice Day. The meaning behind his proposal was stated to be: