(OT) June 6

>> I was born on November 5, 1941 and I was told it was so bad
>> World War Two broke out a month later.

> Germany touched off WWII - Sept 1, 1939 by invading Poland.

....having tested the waters and prototyped some tactics in the Spanish
Civil War and (by proxy) in a few other places. Then Japan invaded
China in 1937, or should I say made the most major invasion, and the
one with the closest and most unbroken historical connection to what
we might think of as WWII.

I've never been satisfied with my understanding of how and when it
came to be called a capital-letter World War, rather than a group of
wars around the world. My guess (this is only a guess; for the next
sixty seconds this station will conduct guesswork...) is that it would
have happened after the Tripartite Agreement that formed the Axis, in
what, mid-1940? Or was it sometime in 1941 -- perhaps when Hitler
attacked Russia, or later in that year, when Japan really started
attacking US and British interests (among other things) in the
Pacific more broadly? Anyway, somebody, at some point, first
applied that term, and it's an annoying though unimportant missing
piece of the puzzle for me.

Of course, excessive historical accuracy would suck all the funniness
out of the earlier poster's family wisecrack; and really, the Pearl
Harbor attack probably *is* what most Americans would perceive, from
their perspective, as not only the start of their war, but the final
proof that it had become a world war...

So anyway. Off topic it may be, but here's to those who landed on a
fortified and defended beach on another sixth of June long years ago.
And all who went into other far-flung hells for the same cause. We
owe you more than words can say.

Cheers,
--Joe