For those who never understood what the D in D-Day stood for, I hope this helps. The D in D-Day just stands for “Day.” It is the designation that the military uses on the start date of an important operation. The days before or after the start date of an operation are labeled with plus or minus signs. For example, two days before the start date would be D-2, while two days after the start date would be D+3.
The older I get, the more awe I get about D-Day. Moving 11,000 Allied aircraft, 7,000 ships, and landing craft manned by over 195,000 naval personnel and dispersing over 156,000 soldiers in one day is no easy feat.
In the ensuing Battle of Normandy, 73,000 Allied forces were killed and 153,000 wounded. The battle — and especially Allied bombings of French villages and cities — killed around 20,000 French civilians. The exact German casualties aren’t known, but historians estimate between 4,000 and 9,000 men were killed, wounded or missing during the D-Day invasion alone. About 22,000 German soldiers are among the many buried around Normandy.
Much is made of the young men who stormed the beach, but the oldest was 57-year-old General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., who was in command of taking Utah Beach. He died a month later of a massive heart attack and was later posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Historians will remember his father and former president, was a Rough Rider. So, I thought it was cool his Jeep carried that name.
A part of the 80th anniversary of D-Day included a pre-dawn drone show.
I haven’t thought about it before, but it occurred to me that Lego sets are just three-dimensional puzzles. For instance, if you buy a Lego set to build a Death Star, you assemble random plastic bits to make a structure, just like you would put puzzle pieces together to make a picture.
I read a story about how the world is a step closer to male birth control. It works by a man rubbing a hormone-changing gel on his shoulders daily, which changes their hormone level in what I think will take a month. I’m unsure how comfortable young adult males who want to put off having kids will feel about using the product. Personally, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable using it. Especially a new product. I would fear that it would somehow permanently keep me from producing sperm or alter its creation. Women are born with a set number of eggs, approximately 1 to 2 million eggs in their ovaries. But a man has to produce sperm, and I doubt men want to risk the ability to create boys who can swim.
The Ticket had former Elvis (Presley)* stage manager Charlie Stone as an in-studio guest, and I was transfixed. I love hearing Elvis stories. Interestingly, Elvis never had craft services or any food backstage.
I received a $2,000 anesthesia bill from a surgery I had last April, so I called Cigna to talk to a representative to have it reprocessed since I knew I already met my deductible. I don’t know who designed their phone routing system, but I could choke them. I understand what they are trying to do to make things more efficient and effective, but they haven’t fully thought this through. They think that if they provide a bunch of information that I can already access on my computer without the option of speaking to a representative, my needs will be magically fulfilled. In my case, after I was verified and the system understood my call was about a claim, it asked for the day the procedure was performed. In most cases, a customer will just have a single claim for a day because only a single procedure was performed. But since I had surgery, I had something like 13 claims that day. They designed the system to read each individual claim without giving the customer the option to skip or advance to another menu. I had to listen to all 13 claims, the dollar amount, provider, and status before it would let me choose an option to speak to a representative. You’re probably thinking all I needed to do was press #, zero, or a bunch of random buttons, and then it would kick me over to a real human being. Nope. I tried. I was forced to listen to all the claims, and only then did it allow me other options.
I saw Prince William serve as an usher at a friend’s wedding. I’ll be honest; I didn’t think a person next in line of royal succession could be an usher, that there is some sort of protocol or decorum. An usher is one of those lower-ranked roles in a wedding, one that you often give to someone you’re not all close with but still need to fill a spot. I know; I’ve usually been asked to be an usher. I’ve only been a groomsman once. Was this an honorary role? Did he escort people to their seats?
I’m sure many people will be talking about the news out of Wisconsin today. A white father jumped on stage at his daughter’s high school graduation and prevented her from shaking hands with the Black superintendent by grabbing him by the arm and pushing him. You can see the video here. It’s important to note it’s been reported that it wasn’t a race issue with the father, but he’s been upset at how the superintendent has handled a bullying problem. However, it’s important to note this Wisconsin high school was in the news in 2018 when a bunch of its male students decided to take a photo doing a Nazi salute.
What a way for me to end this post. It started with D-Day and ended with a Nazi salute by American students.
*I know there was no need to make the obvious distinction. I’m just being goofy, and it made me laugh.
