In more recent centuries, governments paid for public memorials, particularly to honor their war dead.
The Queen led the nation's tributes to the war dead at the annual service of remembrance in London.
The bell of the destroyer HMS Verdun, which served in WWI, was rung twice in honour of the war dead.
On Friday more than 11, 000 empty chairs will be arranged in silent poignant and powerful memory of Sarajevo's war dead.
The first minister will visit the graves of the Commonwealth war dead in Liveramentu Cemetery, the main cemetery in Colombo.
At Belfast City Hall, the governor of the Apprentice Boys, Alistair Simpson, laid a wreath at the cenotaph in memory of the war dead.
Mr Sarkozy said there would be a national day of remembrance for France's war dead in the coming days as he marked Mr Ponticelli's death.
On the same day, an Irish government minister will take part in the annual Remembrance Day service for the war dead in Belfast, for the first time.
On Memorial Day we are all small town America, honoring the sacrifices of our war dead and wounded while celebrating the simple freedoms of the first long hot summer weekend.
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One example of his outreach work was persuading a British radical who had unceremoniously set fire to a large paper poppy, the British symbol of remembrance for their war dead, to see the error of his ways.
Just as he refused to attend the official memorial service for the war's dead in July, so Sunday, Olmert was too busy to attend the ceremony.
Amid the rubble and confusion of war, the stench of the dead and wails of the living, war offers a terrible clarity.
What is certain is that the response has already far exceeded that following other humanitarian crises including some in which the loss of life has exceeded the 150, 000 now thought to have been killed, such as Congo's war (perhaps 3m dead), or matched it, such as Bangladesh's cyclone in 1991 (140, 000 dead).
The grave of Mr Godwin's elder sister, shot dead in the independence war, becomes a slum-dwellers' toilet.
And how he gets to his hatred of war redeems the worst excesses and dead ends in his work.
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Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Reid has welcomed "changing nationalist attitudes" to remembering the dead of the first World War.
There was warm applause from the crowd as the parade marched past the war memorial, inscribed to The Glorious Dead.
South Sudan became independent from Sudan in July 2011, following a popular referendum and a war that left nearly 2 million people dead.
The protagonist, Ross Poldark, returns from war to find that his father is dead and his betrothed is now arranged to be married to his cousin.
It lasted 15 years with an estimated 150, 000 dead and yet, the war is not even mentioned in school history books, says playwright Rabih Mroue.
It has opened seven investigations in Africa, including in Liberia's eastern neighbor Ivory Coast, whose former President Laurent Gbagbo is now in court custody after a five-month postelection war that left 3, 000 people dead.
Congo's war, which has left an estimated two million dead, broke out in 1998.
July has been the deadliest month of the war in Afghanistan for international troops, with 67 dead so far this month.
But also pain and bewilderment at the confusions of war itself, the shocking photographs of the innocent dead, the media experts with their daily questioning of how things are being run.
The truth is that the people of Galina had no idea what they were witnessing, but with that ignorance they crutched their way over to something, a necessary something that justified a shared moment in a time that was otherwise completely inexplicable a tiger that seemed to come from nowhere, a valiant but dead blacksmith, a vanished butcher, a war delayed by the weather.
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