Infinite Wisdom

"We mourn their fall, yet joy they once were here, To show their country what they held dear."

--	Stephen Jacob, Commemoration Address, Bennington Battlefield, August, 1778

La Triviata

• During 1943 some 5,000 people were killed in the continental United States in military-related aviation accidents.
  
  
• On October 27, 1914, the battleship HMS Audacious struck a mine off the Irish coast, and shortly sank, but so slowly that not a single member of the ship’s company was lost.
  
  
• During the American Revolution, British Gen. Sir Henry Clinton was nicknamed “The Knight,” because of his extremely frequent excursions into the country to go riding and fox hunting.
  
  
• During the Eastern Zhou period of Chinese history (770 to 221 B.C.), battles allegedly were fought according to rigid rules of ettiquette, with personnel strictly enjoined from engaging or killing opponents who were of different social rank.
  
  
• On August 27, 1816, a diplomatic effort by Great Britain and the Netherlands succeeded in convincing the Dey of Algiers to abolish the enslavement of Christians by advancing a simple argument, in the form of 40,000 rounds from their fleets.
  
  
• Count Alfred von Waldersee, who became Chief of the German General Staff in 1888, was removed from his post in 1891 because he criticized Kaiser Wilhelm’s decidedly inept performance during maneuvers.
  
  
• During the Napoleonic Wars – and for a long time before and after – the normal sleeping arrangements for British soldiers was four men to a bed.
  
  
• In 1713, traveling mostly on horseback and never once changing his clothes, King Charles XII of Sweden (1697-1718), military wunderkind of the age, covered the distance between Pitesti in Wallachia and Straslund in Pomerania – some 1,300 miles as the crow flies – in 14 days, to return to his kingdom after 15 years abroad, in wars against Russia and imprisonment in Turkey.

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