Some dates specialize. May 7 has, across three separate centuries and two world wars, developed a recurring relationship with the moment empires and armies admit they cannot continue. The pattern is not coincidence. It is the calendar doing what it does — accumulating weight until a date no longer belongs only to the year it inhabits. On May 7, 1915, the RMS Lusitania was struck by a German torpedo fourteen miles off the southern coast of Ireland.

The armistice ending the First World War was signed at 5:10 AM on November 11, 1918, in a railway carriage in the Forest of Compiègne, north of Paris. It was agreed to take effect at 11 AM — the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month — a time chosen for its symbolic tidiness. The six hours between signature and cessation were not a logistical necessity. The war could have stopped at 5:10.