10/25/2026
On this day, America began a solemn tradition of remembrance. In 1921, in a chapel at Châlons-sur-Marne, an Army sergeant named Edward F. Younger walked past four identical caskets—each holding an unidentified American from different WWI battle sectors—and placed a spray of white roses on one. That chosen soldier would come home as the first Unknown Soldier, a symbol for the 77,000 Americans lost on the Western Front whose names could not be confirmed. Marking the 105th anniversary, we remember that the Unknown’s journey was anything but simple: the casket traveled across the Atlantic on the USS Olympia, Admiral Dewey’s Spanish-American War flagship, before lying in state at the Capitol and interment at Arlington.
What many don’t know: Younger selected the casket using a simple, private ritual—circling the coffins several times with the roses until, guided by instinct and grief, he stopped. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has since become a place of national promise: that no one who serves is forgotten, and that sacrifice is honored even when a name is lost to history.
