This year marks the centennial of the end of World War I, during which hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives. The memory of the fallen will be honoured this Sunday 11 November across the globe. In Melbourne, people will gather at the Shrine of Remembrance, where a a wreath laying ceremony is to take place at exactly 11am.

It is at this time that the light of the sun begins to shine through and display the writing that is carved on the stone that reads “Greater Love Hath No Man”, a special feature of the stone that required over 140 pages of calculations in order to get right.

Attending the event will be the Governor of Victoria, Linda Dessau, who will be laying the wreath, along with the Premier Daniel Andrews, the lord mayor of Melbourne, Sally Capp, diplomats, politicians, Shrine Trusties and Governors, RSL and Legacy representatives and Defence Service Chiefs.

The end of the Great War occurred on 11 November, 1918 as the armies of the Allied Forces were in negotiations with the Germans at Compiegne of France for the entire evening, with an agreement for an armistice finally being reached at 5.00 am.

However it took another six hours for word to get out to the troops on the battlefield. And so, with the agreement being passed at 11.00 am Paris time, it came to be known as the “armistice of the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month” and marked the victory for the Allied Forces and the withdrawal of Germany behind the Rhine border.

The official emblem of Remembrance Day is the red poppy, as it was the only flower to bloom across the battlefields after the war had ended, as if to not allow anyone to forget about the blood that had been spilt with its bright red colour.