MIRUS Financial Partners

Investment Adv. Rep. offering securities and advisory services through Cetera Wealth Advisors, a Broker/Dealer and RIA, member FINRA/SIPC.

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

The night before D-Day, Eisenhower quietly wrote a note he hoped he'd never have to send. It read: "Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold, and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available... if any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone." He crumpled it up when the landings succeeded. An aide rescued it from the trash, and it now sits in the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas. -NPR, 6/8/13

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

D-Day was the opening act. The Battle of Normandy that followed lasted nearly 3 months and extracted a staggering price. By the time Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944, total casualties across Allied and German forces had surpassed 425,000 killed, wounded, or missing, and an estimated 20,000 French civilians had also lost their lives, many from Allied bombing intended to soften German defenses. -PBS NewsHour, 6/5/23

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

The Allies didn't just outfight the Germans at Normandy; they outfoxed them first. Under the codename Operation Bodyguard, Allied commanders spent months running a massive deception campaign designed to convince Hitler that the real invasion would land at Pas-de-Calais, not Normandy. The plan worked so well that even after the beaches were stormed on June 6th, Hitler held his armored reserves back, convinced Normandy was a feint, a delay that proved fatal to Germany's defense. - Eisenhower Presidential Library, accessed 2/20/26

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

What most people don't know is that D-Day almost didn't happen on June 6th at all. The invasion was originally set for June 5th, but British meteorologist Group Captain James Stagg, defying his own colleagues, convinced Eisenhower to delay by 24 hours after detecting an approaching storm. It proved to be one of the most consequential weather calls in history, because 3 weeks later, a severe storm tore through the English Channel that would have almost certainly destroyed the invasion had it been launched as planned. -Imperial War Museums, 6/4/26

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

On June 6, 1944, roughly 160,000 American, British, and Canadian troops stormed 50 miles of fortified Normandy coastline in what remains the largest amphibious invasion in military history. By the end of that single day, more than 4,400 Allied soldiers were confirmed dead… yet within a week, over 326,000 troops, 50,000 vehicles, and 100,000 tons of equipment had landed on those same beaches. -History.com, 3/4/26

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

“It will take at least 4 months to ger back to 80% of pre-conflict flows (of oil), and full flows will not return before the first or even second quarter of ’27” – FT

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

"In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

Back in 2007, Hard Rock International, which had fallen on tough times, was purchased for just under $1B by the Seminoles, a Native American tribe in Florida. In ’25, Hard Rock generated $7.9B in revenue, estimates Forbes – Economist

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

In America, 3.2m children, or 6% of the school age population, were home schooled in ’24 – more than double the number in ’19. Only 8 states require all home schooled children to take academic assessments, and 27 have no home school testing requirements – Economist

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

Musk believes SpaceX is worth $1.75T. That would make it the 7th biggest company in the U.S. despite revenues that would rank it about 200th in the U.S., roughly on par with General Mills, maker of Lucky Charms – FT

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

Adjusted for inflation, hourly wages are up 3% since the end of 2019 while profits are up 50% - WSJ

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

Retirement uncertainty is rising along with costs, with half of retirees saying expenses have come in higher than expected and 58% worried about outliving their savings. The strain shows up in preparedness as well, with about two-thirds of retirees wishing they had planned more ahead of time. (Source: Barron's)

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

Japan is set to open the world’s first Pokémon-themed airport on July 7, transforming a small regional hub with just 4 daily flights into a destination designed to boost tourism and support recovery efforts after the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake. The airport will be decorated with all 111 flying-type Pokémon, alongside murals, statues, and even themed food and merchandise. (Source: AOL)

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

In an attempt to stymie grade inflation, Harvard is voting to cap A’s at 20% of grades in each undergraduate course. The move comes after A’s surged to about 60% of all grades in 2024–25, up from just 35% a little over a decade earlier. While faculty see it to restore rigor, 94% of surveyed students opposed the change. (Source: NYT)

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

“Markets can be out of sync with reality for an extended period, and then react rapidly and harshly” – Robert Rubin

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

After potatoes, Americans eat more tomatoes than any other vegetable. Tomato prices are almost 25% higher than a year ago – Economist

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

The most common answer in the history of Jeopardy is Australia. When in doubt: What is Australia – Atlantic

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

Walmart recently warned that consumers are stressed from higher fuel prices, and are filling their tanks with an avg of less than 10 gallons per trip at its gas stations for the 1st time since 2022 – WSJ

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

The holiday we now call Memorial Day didn't begin with an act of Congress or a presidential proclamation… it began with formerly enslaved Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina. On May 1st, 1865, just weeks after the Civil War ended, roughly 10,000 freed people (including 3,000 schoolchildren singing "John Brown's Body") marched around a former Confederate prison racetrack where 257 Union soldiers had been buried in a mass grave. They had spent two weeks exhuming the bodies, reburying each one properly, and inscribing the words "Martyrs of the Racecourse" over the entrance. The story was largely erased from public memory for over a century, that is, until a historian discovered it in a dusty Harvard archive in the late 1990s. - https://t.co/6fFNuCrrWY, 5/24/19

[MIRUS Financial Partners @MarkVergenes]

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery has been guarded every single minute of every single day since midnight on July 2, 1937. Through blizzards, hurricanes, and the attacks of September 11th. The guards never outrank the soldiers in the Tomb… they remove their rank insignia before taking post, and the sentinel's 21-step patrol (precise literally, to the inch) is a deliberate nod to the 21-gun salute, the highest military honor in existence.
- American Battlefield Trust, 11/6/25