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Amazon just released the Echo Spot alarm clock, and it’s on sale ahead of Prime Day
Amazon
Amazon’s already expansive lineup of Alexa-enabled devices keeps growing. The latest addition: A smart alarm clock that might actually make mornings tolerable.
If you’re the type of person who needs a bit more nudging to wake up each day, you’re not alone. But the Amazon Echo Spot smart alarm clock can do its part to make rising and shining each day a bit simpler. This customizable clock offers rich, vibrant sound and a slew of other Alexa-centric features to make easing into the day not only tolerable, but fun.
The Echo Spot only just debuted, and it’s already on sale at Amazon ahead of Prime Day 2024. You can snag one in multiple colors for a 44% discount, making it just $45 versus its retail price of $80. Alternatively, you can get the Echo Spot with its charging stand bundled together for just $75, marked down from its normal price of $110.
If you want to see what all the fuss is about, you’ll want to add this smart alarm clock to your cart and bring it home before this sale comes to an end after Prime Day.
Amazon Echo Spot smart alarm clock: $45 ($35 off)
Amazon
Add the new Echo Spot to your smart home ecosystem and bring Alexa to your nightstand. Customize this smart gadget with your favorite clock face, colors, alarm sounds and more. It has a smart display that shows the time, weather, song titles and other information at a glance so you have everything you need right in front of you in the morning.
A smart speaker at heart, it’s loud and effective as an alarm clock, but you can use it to enjoy music and podcasts with crisp clarity and surprisingly loud volume. Control it with touch or via Alexa, which can also be set up to follow routines that wake you up with music and soft light in a more gentle way than traditional alarms.
You can use the Echo Spot as a smart home hub by way of Alexa as well, with voice controls that mean you don’t have to stumble out of bed in the morning to find a switch or touch a panel somewhere else to turn on the lights or get your day going.
Right now, you can save $35 on the Echo Spot, making it just $45 for Prime Day. Grab yours quickly before it goes up to $80 once more. You can also the Echo Spot with its charging stand bundled together for just $75, marked down from its normal price of $110.
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Syracuse, Nebraska — Gerri Eisenhauer’s father, Army Pvt. William Walters, was shipped off to World War II before she was even born.
In 1944, her family got back his body and a U.S. government letter that only said he had died somewhere in France.
“I just always wondered, where he died, how he died, it was just a little part of a puzzle piece that was missing in my life,” Eisenhauer told CBS News.
For decades, the family was resigned to the fact that it would never know. That is, until a few months ago.
Eisenhauer was at her home in Syracuse, Nebraska, this past summer when she received a message from Christophe Ligere, a French historian, from the small village of Grez-sur-Loing, in central France. The message read, in part, “On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of France, we pay tribute to Private William Walters.”
Ligere had found Walters’ name in the diary of an eyewitness to his death, and he immediately felt like he had to find Walters’ family. Ligere conducted some research and located the Walters’ family tree, and from there he found the online obituary of another relative of Eisenhauer, through which he left her that message.
“We were looking for our soldier,” Eisenhauer’s daughter, Jan Moore, told CBS News. “We did not know that he was their soldier, too.”
As Eisenhauer learned from Ligere, in August 1944, American troops began liberating the village of Grez-sur-Loing. It was a joyous day, but there was one casualty: while crossing the Loing River into town, Walters’ boat capsized and he drowned at the age of 20.
After Ligere tracked down Walters’ family, he invited them to France to honor their shared hero and the sacrifice he made here. Eisenhauer and her daughter and son, Jan and Allen, made the trip in September.
Marc Perrot had witnessed Walters’ death at the age of 13.
“They went looking for him and found him,” Perrot explained in an interview with France Télévisions. “They did a lot of things to try to revive him, but it didn’t work.”
Perrot met Eisenhauer and showed her where they laid her father to rest prior to his body being returned to the U.S.
“They covered him with flowers,” Eisenhauer said of the French. “It’s just amazing, the care that they gave him.”
This week, Eisenhauer returned to her father’s grave in Cass County, Nebraska.
“First time I’ve been here and had the answers,” Eisenhauer said.
She says she now feels at peace, and it’s all thanks to the grateful people of France, who even 80 years on, still see the U.S. through the prism of our better angels.
“It’s very important because the…young people come from the US…to battle for democracy…in France,” Ligere told CBS News.
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