Remembrance Day Fun Facts

To coincide with the lead up to remembrance day on Wednesday, I thought we could share this with the young people in the group for general interest. I have included a 2 minute animation and I thought it might be worth spending a few minutes reflecting on some facts/thoughts.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/poppies

Facts and Thoughts

The Scottish Remembrance poppy is different from the English poppy. The Scottish poppy has 4 petals and the English one has 2 petals, and sometimes a leaf. The Scottish Poppy, which is made Lady Haig’s Poppy Factory in Edinburgh, was founded in 1926 and produces 5 million poppies and 15,000 wreaths each year.

Why is the Scottish poppy different?  That’s because after the first Poppy Appeal in 1921, Lord Haig’s Poppy Factory in England couldn’t meet the demand in Scotland so Lady Haig opened her factory which is staffed by a team of disabled war veterans.

If you think 5 million poppies and 15,000 wreaths is a lot, over the UK, between the Poppy Factories and home workers, there are 35 million poppies produced every year.

Finally, why do we use poppy to remember?  We do that because after the first world war, the first flowers to appear in the battlegrounds were poppies.

One last little piece of information – the UK remembers by a poppy, but France remembers with a cornflower.