It's the Brian Laira show on WNYC.

Good morning, everyone.

Hope you had a great three-day weekend.

If you had a three-day weekend, as always, here's a nod to those of you who had to work on the holiday

weekend so other people could go shopping or go to the beach or go out to eat or if you were

working to keep others safe. If you're a safety worker, lifeguard, or a first responder of any kind.

And also since we were off yesterday on tape with some repeat segments, I want to acknowledge Memorial

Day here for a minute before we move on to today's business.

The original purpose, as most of you know, was to honor the war dead from the Civil War.

It was a day of honor for all service members eventually who died in any U.S. war.

So how many people is that?

That never gets said.

According to the statistics website, Statista, the deadliest was the Civil War, with an estimated 620,000 soldiers killed between the two sides, then World War II,

405,000 Americans, World War I, 116,000, approximately 58,000 American service members were killed

in the Vietnam War. Every name, as many of you know, is engraved on the

Vietnam War Memorial in D.C. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars took more than 7,000 American lives.

And whether any of us supported any of those wars or not, still people gave their lives doing

what they believed was in the essential interest of our country,

plus those who had no choice because they were drafted.

But another expansive way to memorialize on Memorial Day is to consider how many total people

were killed in any of those wars because they are all human beings, right?

Including civilians who got caught

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