KT Robbins is 97 years old now. He was 24 in 1944, when he crossed the Channel with the US Army during Operation Overlord. There he met 18-year old Jeannine Pierson, a resident of the newly liberated French town of Briey. They had a whirlwind 2-month romance.

Then Robbins' unit moved east to continue the fight against Nazi Germany. He and Pierson never saw each other again for 75 years. During that time, they both married other people, raised families, and buried their spouses. Recently, Robbins returned to France for D-Day commemorations and the two lovers were re-united. The Daily Mail describes their meeting:

Robbins and Pierson immediately embraced when they were reunited, gazing into each other's eyes with adoration and joy. 

'I always loved you. You never got out of my heart,' Robbins told Pierson. 

'He said he loves me. I understood that much,' Pierson told one of the journalists in French. 

Photos: France2

Miller calls it the Cantroller. It's not an empty beer can that has been modified into a controller with appropriate electronics. It's actually filled with beer that is completely drinkable--at least to the extent that Miller Lite can be called drinkable. Miller produced 200 of them for the E3 consumer electronics show. They can be won by beating a champion player at the show. Fox News reports:

The game controls are on the other side of the can, all arranged with flat membrane buttons that don't affect the profile of the can itself. It's as simple as you can get, just a direction pad and four face buttons in a Nintendo A/B/X/Y configuration, with Start and Select buttons. The direction pad and Start and Select buttons are all completely flat and click inwards, while the face buttons are slightly raised. The battery pack and Bluetooth transmitter is mounted on the bottom of the can, with a small ribbon cable running to the membrane panel with the controls.

-via Dave Barry

The East West Market, an independent grocery store in Vancouver, British Columbia, wants its shoppers to bring their own reusable bags instead of relying on disposable plastic bags given at the store. So it produced bags that no one would want to be seen casually carrying.

Well, perhaps I should better say that some people would never want to be seen casually carrying these bags. I can easily imagine myself reusing these bags just to get weird looks from people.

They're funny, but I'm skeptical that intentionally humiliating customers is a good business practice.

-via Design Boom

Kamchatka, the most Russian part of Russia, is serviced by the Yelizovo Airport outside of the largest city, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. Recently, security cameras noticed a bear casually strolling through a security checkpoint. The Siberian Times reports:

‘Look who we have here at 5.30am. And without ID, too!’ - says a security guard as he watches the animal confidently walking past his booth. 

Residents and visitors in regional capital Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky were informed about the wanderlust animal, and asked to take extra care when traveling to and from the airport.

Officials warned travelers to be careful if the spot the bear while they are in the airport.

-via Dave Barry

In a more civilized age, it was not unusual for men to resolve their differences on the field of honor. Alas, women were normally excluded and not allowed to battle men. There was at least one exception: in parts of central Europe, a wife could fight her husband to the death.

Men are naturally stronger than women, so the man must be handicapped in order to provide a more equitable combat. In Medieval Justice: Cases and Laws in France, England and Germany, 500-1500, Hunt Janin* writes:

In 1228, a woman fought a man at Berne, Switzerland, and soundly defeated him. German law provided that in such a case the man should be armed with three wooden clubs. He was to put be [sic] up to his waist in a three-food-wide hole dug in the ground, with one hand tied behind his back. The woman was to be armed with three rocks, each weighing between one and five pounds, and each one wrapped in cloth. The man could not leave his hole but the woman was free to run around the edge of the pit.

If the man touched the edge of the pit with either his hand or arm, he had to surrender one of his clubs to the judges. If the woman hit him with a rock while he was doing so, she forfeited one of her stones. Bizarre as it may seem to us today, this marital duel was very far from play-acting. For both parties, the penalty for defeat was death. If the woman won, the man was executed; if the man won, the woman was buried alive.

-via Messy Nessy Chic (content warning: nudity)

*Janin appears to be an extensive writer on history, but not necessarily a historian.

Civitatis Vaticanae de Papa est in domum suam. Est modo in mundo sunt ibi linguam Latinam et venturo aevo est extra scholam occasus. Urbem autem et offer a ordinarius muneris nuntium est lingua in eo. Daily Telegraph tradit:

The first five-minute bulletin will be broadcast on Vatican Radio on Saturday, becoming a regular weekly event.

The programme will be called Hebdomada Papae, notitiae vaticanae latine redditae or The Pope's week - Vatican news in Latin. [...]

Vatican translators have had to come up with some ingenious ways of communicating contemporary concepts into Latin.

A suicide bomber, for instance, is rendered as voluntarius suis interromptor while xenofobia is exterarum gentium odium. 

Latin equivalents of modern terms are often tongue-twisters, such as Certaminibus Mundialibus Sphaeromachiae for the football World Cup, or follis canistrīque ludus for basketball.

On Memorial Day weekend, a rockslide sent this huge boulder tumbling down a mountain and onto a highway outside of Telluride, Colorado. It's too big to move and blasting it apart is prohibitively expensive. So the state Department of Transportation has decided to leave it where it is, name the boulder "Memorial Rock", and re-route the highway. The Denver Post quotes Governor Jared Polis:

“We expect that for generations to come, people will have the opportunity to observe this geological masterpiece that we’re calling Memorial Rock,” Polis said at a morning news conference, adding the decision will save taxpayers about $200,000.

-via Ace of Spades HQ

Photo: Colorado Department of Transportation

Fidan Zaman, an artist in Baku, Azerbaijan, paints seascapes into the pages of a sketchbook, then photographs them lined up with the Caspian waters that inspired them. There's something especially charming about her painting made in the rain.

-via Lustik

Dominic Wilcox makes things you didn't realize that you needed until he made them possible, such as ruby slippers (like from The Wizard of Oz) with GPS navigation to lead you home.

On a busy city sidewalk, it could be helpful to know where other people are turning, especially if they're turning in front of you. The Directing Jacket solves that problem.

(Next, Mr. Wilcox, please invent a shock collar that activates when a person stands still in the middle of the sidewalk or hallway.)

Can't see what's happening at the concert because taller people are blocking your view of the stage? That's why Wilcox invented the Periscope Glasses, which give you the sight of someone one foot taller. He describes their origin:

I was standing at a gig and turned to see a small woman dancing away but unable to see the band. This gave me the inspiration to design a way for people to see over obstacles such as tall people like me.

-via Core77

Ganapathi Bhat of Komale, Karnataka, India, needs to get up his trees to harvest areca nuts. So he built from motorbike parts a machine that reliably moves him up and down safely. MSN reports:

Seven months ago he started working on the concept again and finished the ‘tree bike’ in May using standard motorbike components such as clutch, accelerator, double brakes, shock absorbers and a 2.1 HP petrol engine. “The first time I took a ride to the top, I asked my son to be ready to call an ambulance,” says Bhat. But the machine proved to be safe and he climbed 150 trees before demonstrating it to local farmers. ''I have used high-quality components. But if there is a mechanical failure, it stops midway. You just press the clutch to gently glide it down.”

Neighboring farmers are very interested in his clever invention. Bhat plans to sell them for about 75,000 rupees a piece. That's just over $1,000 USD.

I suspect there'd probably be a recreational market, too. It looks like fun!

-via Geekologie

But rather than be grateful that the raspberries were fortified with extra protein, the shopper at a Sainsbury's grocery store in East Mayne, UK turned the carton into an employee. The New York Post reports:

It is unclear how the dark-scaled gecko managed to find its way to the Essex supermarket, but the company says it has processes in place to “prevent these sorts of scaly surprises.”

“I was approached by a fellow customer who had picked them up and she was worried about it being disposed of, I passed it on to a supervisor and left it with him. I can only hope he or she wasn’t hurt,” Johnson said.

-via Proper Opinion

Photo: SWNS

The first time that Tom Rice of San Diego, California parachuted into Normandy, France, people were shooting at him. But that was on June 6, 1944. He was a US Army Ranger on that fateful day.

On both occasions, he was jumping out of a Douglas C-47 Skytrain. This time, Rice and the C-47 were participating in commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the allied invasion of Normandy. AP reports:

Rice said afterward, "it went perfect, perfect jump." He continued, "I feel great. I'd go up and do it all again."

He jumped in a tandem into roughly the same area he landed in on D-Day, outside of Carentan, a Normandy town among the main objectives for the Allied paratroopers on D-Day.

Damon Hudson of St. Ives, Cornwall, UK, gets home milk delivery. But lately, in the morning, he's found that his milk has been stolen. To fight back, he recently took the milk immediately after it was delivered at 4 AM. Then he peed added fish oil and his own urine before placing it back outside. The thief predictably showed up and took the bottle, which Hudson recorded on a security camera.

-via Dave Barry

Photos by Ben Sutherland and BPM, respectively

Austin Pets Alive is a no-kill animal shelter for dogs and cats in Austin, Texas. The cats there have the most delightfully odd names. Oh, I'm not blaming the staff at all. They can't help it if the cats offer fake names when they sign up for the program -- their noms de guerre. I'm especially curious about one named The Librarian.

-via Tastefully Offensive