Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

At Arlington National Cemetery, high on a hill overlooking the nation's capital,

lies the final resting place of a single soldier known but to God, the tomb of the unknown soldier.

The hulking slabs of marble are hallowed ground.

On the side of the white marble sarcophagus are sculptures of three Greek figures.

One represents peace, another victory.

The last one, valor.

Millions of visitors pay their respects at the tomb every year.

The President of the United States makes an annual pilgrimage.

As ingrained as this place is in our national psyche, the story of how it came to be

is surprisingly not well known. On November 11, 1921, a funeral unlike any other took place at Arlington.

The nation's highest military officers were there, along with congressional leaders,

Supreme Court justices, and diplomats from around the world.

The crowd was so huge that the car transporting President Warren G. Harding

had to drive across fields for him to get there on time.

Before that autumn morning, monuments to the unnamed dead had always been collective.

But the killing technologies of World War I

brought new levels of identity wiping devastation.

More than 116,000 Americans were slaughtered,

including 1,652, who were too damaged to be identified.

The British, which suffered even greater losses, didn't want to upset the country with scores of funerals for unidentified soldiers.

So they buried a single unknown casualty at Westminster Abbey with state honors.

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