The military parade to mark the Army's 250th anniversary and its convergence with President Donald Trump's 79th birthday are combining to create a peacetime outlier in U.S. history. Yet it still reflects global traditions that serve a range of political and cultural purposes.
Variations on the theme have surfaced among longtime NATO allies in Europe, one-party and authoritarian states and history's darkest regimes.
France: Bastille Day and Trump's idee inspiree
The oldest democratic ally of the U.S. holds a military parade each July 14 to commemorate one of the seminal moments of the French Revolution. It inspired - or at least stoked - Trump's idea for a Washington version.
On July 14, 1789, French insurgents stormed the Bastille, which housed prisoners of Louis XVI's government. Revolutionaries commenced a Fete de la Federation as a day of national unity and pride the following year, even with the First French Republic still more than two years from being established.