St. Augustine, Florida

St. Augustine, Florida, was founded on September 8, 1565 — more than 200 years before the United States was an official country. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was an explorer from Spain who came ashore in Florida on August 28, 1565, on the Catholic feast day of St. Augustine. St. Augustine soon became the capital of Spanish-controlled Florida, and remained so until 1824, when the country had been officially united and the capital of Florida became Tallahassee. Today, visitors to the city can discover more about the history of America’s oldest city in the Castillo de San Marcos history museum.

The “D” in D-Day doesn’t really stand for anything.

WORLD HISTORY

On June 6, 1944, the largest land, sea, and air invasion in the history of the world took place on the beaches of Normandy, France. It was the first phase of Operation Overlord, an Allied plan to land hundreds of thousands of troops into French enemy territory, then move east and liberate the rest of Nazi-occupied Western Europe. The planners of the operation gave it a simple name: D-Day. But what exactly does the “D” stand for? 

The simplest and most widely cited explanation is that the “D” in D-Day stands for “day,” essentially a code indicating a date to be determined (or concealed from enemy forces). “It simply signifies the day that the invasion will launch and puts all the timetables into play,” Keith Huxen, a historian at the National WWII Museum, told TIMEmagazine in 2019. Military history also supports this theory. In the field, the U.S. Army began substituting the letters “D” and “H” for “day” and “hour” as early as World War I. The days and hours leading up to or following an operation, meanwhile, were often noted with plus and minus signs, such as “H-2” or “D+3.”

Not everyone has agreed with this interpretation, however. In his book The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, author Robert Hendrickson wrote that “the French maintain the ‘D’ means ‘disembarkation,’ still others say ‘debarkation,’ and the more poetic insist D-Day is short for ‘day of decision.’” Dwight D. Eisenhower, who served as supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe during Operation Overlord, added to the confusion with his explanation. War Slang author Paul Dickson noted that in 1964, Eisenhower instructed his executive assistant to answer a letter he received about the meaning of D-Day by stating “that any amphibious operation has a ‘departed date’; therefore the shortened term ‘D-Day’ is used.” In fact, there were multiple “D-Days” during World War II, and other single-letter designations were used as well, such as M-Day for “mobilization.”

Ancient Olympic athletes competed naked.

ARTS & CULTURE

Many aspects of the ancient Olympics are similar to what we see in our modern competition, but there’s at least one notable difference: Today, all Olympians wear clothes. For ancient Greek athletes, nudity functioned as something of a national uniform, an intentional contrast to their Persian rivals, who traditionally found it against decorum to appear naked. Competing in the nude (often while covered in olive oil) was also seen as a way to show off status. According to historian Donald Kyle, “In Archaic Greece, disrobing fully to become naked for sport became an assertive communication of maleness, ethnicity, status, freedom, privilege, and physical virtue.” Some athletes also considered performing naked a tribute to Zeus. In fact, the words “gymnasium” and “gymnastics” both come from the Greek word “gymnasion,” which refers to a place to train or exercise naked. 

While competing naked became a Greek tradition, it wasn’t always that way; some ancient vases from the Minoan period (which ended around 1200 BCE) depict Athenian athletes competing in loincloths. According to accounts by various scholars, the first naked competitor appeared in the 15th Olympiad in 720 BCE. Orsippus of Megara was said to have lost his loincloth during a race, and then ran on to victory. An epitaph of Orsippus, attributed to the poet Simonides of Ceos, reads, “First of the Greeks in Olympia was he crowned while naked; Before him, all contestants were girdled in the stadium.” In the modern Olympics, things have changed a little bit, and now competitors wear clothing —  though on rare occasions, some modern runners will still go without shoes.