One of my favorite.

Because they had a good officer corps producing some ridiculous military geniuses in their age of empire. As an example, the Duke of Wellington (Arthur Wellesley) was a monster who was unstoppable in the military conquest of India. Many other British commanders failed battling Indian states, but he seemed to win just about every battle, at times being both outnumbered and outarmed.

I would go on to say that it wasn't for that man, it is likely the British conquest of India would have been confined to only a limited territory. Indian states were modernizing and militarizing rapidly (relatively for that era), so any delays in conquest would have made India a hard nut to crack.

This was 2002. They are friendly countries, seems like everyone responded appropriately.

Because the food was so bad and the women were so ugly that they had no choice to but leave

> i simply cannot fathom how britain controlled so much of the planet at one point

Boats, optionally guns.

When you reflect on how easily America became an imperialist crybaby, it can't have been hard for Britain either.

Hmm I'll take your word for it that that's true, but I would say the examples are very different. Independence Day is a title/holiday retroactively created to commemorate the event (which apparently might not have even happened on July 4).

Whereas D-Day was something soldiers used to describe that specific day even before it happened. And you would hear things like "D-Day plus 23" to describe points in time, you wouldn't have to specify the year

So to me the Independence Day analogy is a little weak.

This would make sense if there's often D Day ceremonies. In the us I think that's all moved to memorial Day, so D-Day pings only as the original event here

The headline definitely didn't make any sense to me (I was thinking maybe an Onion article?) before reading the rest.

Made me do a double take for sure.

In the Schengen area, if you are a non-EU person, until recently you needed to ensure you are stamped in and out otherwise you'll run into issues with them thinking you may have overstayed.

After UK went all freedumb and left the EU this caused a lot of issues, I have a UK colleague that visited his wife's family in Poland over a Christmas, didn't get a stamp on the way back, then ran into problems a few months later as they argued he had been in Europe for months.

The stamp is acknowledgement of your tourist visa. Maybe EU citizens don't need one, but as an American entering France I certainly did. If I didn't, I sure wish the visibly armed Finnish lady who led me back near one of those beat-you-up interrogation rooms had known, it could've saved us both some hassle and me a major scare.