Arlington National Cemetery is running out of room

Headstones at Arlington National Cemetery.
(Image credit: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

Unless the Army comes up with strict new rules about who can be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place of hundreds of thousands of veterans and their families will be completely full in 25 years.

Every year, about 7,000 people are buried at the cemetery, where 420,000 veterans and their relatives are already interred. The Army wants to be able to bury people at Arlington for 150 more years, but it can't get any bigger because of highways and development. One proposal is extremely strict: Allow burials only for service members killed in action or those who have received the Medal of Honor, The New York Times reports.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.