Veterans Day. On this day in 1982, the V-shaped, polished black granite Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C.’s Constitution Gardens—seven years after the end of the Vietnam War. Since then, more than 200 million people have visited its solemn path of remembrance.

Designed by Chinese American artist and architect Maya Ying Lin when she was a 21-year-old Yale student, the memorial was conceived as a quiet landscape—“a rift in the earth,” she said—emerging and receding to be experienced through movement and reflection.

Along its 140 reflective panels are engraved the names of 58,318 Americans who died or remain missing, listed in the order of their death—“in the order they were taken from us.” The chronology allows each visitor to find a loved one’s time and see their story woven into the whole.

The memorial invites quiet experience and communal reflection, a powerful reminder of the human cost of war—and the enduring call of peace.