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Podcast: Today In History with The Retrospectors
Episode: The First Two Minute Silence
Description: The two minute silence can be traced back to 14th May, 1918, when it was first observed in Cape Town, South Africa. Repeated daily for a year, and initiated by the firing of the noon day gun on Signal Hill, the ‘Two Minute Silent Pause of Remembrance’, as it was known, was instituted by Cape Town Mayor Sir Harry Hands and councillor Robert Rutherford Brydone, both of whom had lost sons at the Front.In this episode, The Retrospectors consider the optimum length for a silence (three minutes was, apparently, simply too long); explain how t...