I am watching CBC’s coverage of the US mid-term elections because they’re slightly less annoying than CNN/C-SPAN/Fox/ABC/etc. All the Canadian News people are wearing poppy pins, which led me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole on how the poppy flower is a symbol for remembering military service members. It dates back to a WWI era poem, and also inspired France to do create a similar bleuet de France.
It also led me to this 2015 article in which some Canadians considered it “defacing” the symbol to use a safer pin design than an inches long stick pin. I’m just glad USians aren’t the only that get mouth-frothing stupid about arbitrary symbols. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/remembrance-day-poppy-pin-that-won-t-fall-off-1.3311799
As kids in school we were given these with the long pin. Lots of us learned that the skin in your palm is pretty thick and you can pierce a layer of skin without it hurting or bleeding, and then you could wear your poppy embedded in your hand.
Gives me the creeps thinking back on that.