[peeters]

> Passports please! British paratroopers met by French customs after D-Day airdrop

Err, D-Day anniversary airdrop. That headline has only one correct literal interpretation, and it's wrong (not ambiguous, wrong).

[arrowsmith]

I don't know about the US, but in the UK you can definitely say "D-Day" to mean "an anniversary of the original D-Day", not strictly 6/6/1944. It's not wrong.

Just like you can say "Independence Day" to mean July 4th of any year, not only the specific historical date on which the US declared independence.

[peeters]

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.

[jeremyjh]

That was the original usage but there is no reason to think usage hasn't changed in Britain, if a British person is saying it is now used this way.

[nemomarx]

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

[arrowsmith]

You could say e.g. "today is D-Day" to mean "today is June 6th".

But if you said "D-Day" without context people would assume you meant the event in WWII. So yeah, I guess the original headline is definitely misleading, if not strictly inaccurate.

[glimshe]

I'm not a betting man, but I were, I'd bet on most readers having understood it correctly. I suspect it was meant to be click bait, though.

[lucianbr]

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

[simonklitj]

Made me do a double take for sure.