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Troops from the U.S. 1st Infantry Division landing on Omaha Beach
Troops from the U.S. 1st Infantry Division landing on Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach was one of five sectors of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France in the Normandy landings on D-Day, 6 June 1944, during World War II. The untested 29th Infantry Division and nine companies of U.S. Army Rangers assaulted the western half of the beach; the battle-hardened 1st Infantry Division targeted the eastern half. The opposing German 352nd Infantry Division troops, mostly teenagers with no battalion-level training and some Eastern Front veterans, were largely deployed in strongpoints along the coast. The initial assault waves of tanks, infantry, and combat engineer forces were tasked with reducing the coastal defenses to allow larger ships to land. Little went as planned: most landing craft missed their targets, and the defenses were unexpectedly strong. Troops could not clear the heavily defended exits off the beach, delaying later landings. Groups of survivors eventually improvised assaults, scaling the bluffs between the most heavily defended points. By the end of the day, two small isolated footholds had been won, and the original objective of a beachhead 5 miles deep was achieved within days. (Full article...)

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Remains of a wooden barge at the Purton site
Remains of a wooden barge at the Purton site

In the news

Muhammad Ali in 1967
Muhammad Ali

On this day...

June 6: Ramadan begins (Islam, 2016); Queen's Official Birthday in New Zealand (2016); Western Australia Day (2016)

Novarupta's lava dome
Novarupta's lava dome

From today's featured list

Mike Babcock
Mike Babcock

There have been 27 head coaches of the Detroit Red Wings, a professional ice hockey team based in Detroit, Michigan. Of them, three were during the era of the Detroit Cougars (1926–1930) and Detroit Falcons (1930–1932) and the rest were under the Detroit Red Wings (1932–present). Six Red Wings coaches have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as players: Jack Adams, Sid Abel, Bill Gadsby, Marcel Pronovost, Ted Lindsay, and Brad Park, with two others inducted as builders: Tommy Ivan and Scotty Bowman. Barry Smith has the highest winning percentage of any Red Wings coach, with an .800 record from the five games he coached on an interim basis with Dave Lewis during the 1998 season. Adams coached the most games of any Red Wings head coach, 964 games during his tenure with the Cougars, Falcons and Red Wings. Adams also has the most regular season losses and ties. Mike Babcock (pictured) has the most regular season wins. (Full list...)

Today's featured picture

Hammer projection

The Hammer projection is a map projection described by Ernst Hammer in 1892. It uses the same 2:1 elliptical outer shape as the Mollweide projection. Both projections are equal-area, but by depicting parallels of latitude as curved lines rather than straight, Hammer reduced distortion toward the outer limbs, where it is extreme in the Mollweide.

Map: Strebe, using Geocart

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