June 6th: The Letter D

It's D day - with a twist. 10 things you didn't know about the fourth letter of the alphabet.

1. The letter D derives from the Semitic letter Daleth and the Greek Delta. These in turn probably derived from a hieroglyph for a fish or a door.
2. D is the 10th most frequently used letter in the English language. In Scrabble, there are two D tiles, worth two points each.
3. In the NATO phonetic alphabet, D is represented by Delta and in Morse code it's -··. In British Sign Language 'd' is indicated by holding the right hand with the index and thumb extended and slightly curved, and the tip of the thumb and finger held against the extended index of the left hand, forming the shape of an upper case letter D.
4. If you write down all the names of consecutive numbers in English (one, two, three, etc) d does not appear until you reach one hundred.
5. There isn't a chemical element with the symbol D, but it is used to represent Deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen.
6. There is a river in Lincoln City, Oregon, United States called the D River. This river is just 440 feet (130m) long, which was in the Guinness book of records until 1989 as the world's shortest river. It lost its title to the Roe River in Montana at this point, although the people of Lincoln City submitted new measurements to try and get the title back. Presumably the people at Guinness World Records got a bit sick of this as they removed the category for the world's shortest river in 2006. The river was so short that for a long time it didn't have a name at all and was simply called "the Outlet" until the city ran a contest to name it.
7. A D year is a non-leap year which starts on a Thursday. The most recent D year was 2015 and the next one will be 2026. A D year is notable as the one which contains the most Friday the 13ths; in February, March and November.
8. Vitamin D is a group of fat-soluble substances responsible for increasing absorption of calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphate, and zinc. There are not many foods which contain it - it's the one we make in our skin when we go out in the sun.
9. There is a film called D. It's an Indian film released in 2005, a crime drama-thriller directed by Vishram Sawant and co-written by Manish Gupta, and Ram Gopal Varma.
10. Other uses for the letter D include: the Roman numeral for 500; a below average grade in education; specifying the number of sides to Dice in role playing games; a musical note a tone above C, known as Re within the fixed-Do solfege (Do-re-me) system; a penny in pre-decimal British currency; a computer programming language by Walter Bright and D (for Degenerate), a white dwarf in stellar classification.

If you want facts about the D Day landings in WWII: D-Day