It's hard to imagine what the end of World War I must have felt like, but we can at least get a sense for what it sounded like: A 100-year-old recording captured the war's violent final seconds – followed by a stirring silence.
Made near the River Moselle, which flows through France, Luxembourg, and Germany, the recording documents the moments leading up to the war’s official end, at 11 am on November 11, 1918. The audio begins with loud gunfire and explosions, followed by an abrupt but undoubtedly welcomed silence after the clock struck 11.
The aged recording, restored from an authentic sound graph, was released by the UK’s Imperial War Museum as dozens of world leaders gathered in Paris to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the deadly war.
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