Historical reminders are events, persons, places and dates intended to help us remember particular memory of the past.
When Peter Jennings hosted a 15 part documentary that chronicles the defining events of the 20th century, he spoke about historical reminders in the opening sequence in the 1st episode, The Beginning: Seeds of Change.
Jennings specifically cited the following historical reminders:
Buildings which stand like silent witnesses to the enormous changes over these hundred years.
A garage which started the century as a stable.
Memorials along American main streets commemorate those who died on the European battle fields of World War I.
Hometown coffee shops for more than half the century that used to serve whites only.
Joanna Niżyńska, in her book, The Kingdom of Insignificance: Miron Białoszewski and the Quotidian, the Queer, and the Traumatic, relates "sites of memory" being marked by collective reminders of history whose function is to preserve the memory of the past by institutionalizing it as history.