Infinite Wisdom

"I detest war, it spoils armies."

--	Grand Duke Constantine Petrovich Romanov

La Triviata

• During the Seven Years' War (1754-1763) seven of every nine British infantrymen contracted smallpox, and one in four of the victims died.


• In 1939 the cost of a full dress uniform – which still included a plumed bicorn hat, gold braided cuffs and shoulder boards, sword with belt, and more – for a U.S. Navy Rear Admiral (Lower Half—i.e., an O-7) was equal to the difference in pay between what he had had made as a captain and what he would receive as a rear admiral for an entire a year.


• So tight-fisted was Congress in 1851, that the Army was forced to dismount all of its horse artillery, not being able to provide for the care and feeding of the steeds.


• In 1868 more than 40-percent of British Army officers were the sons of peers, baronets, or landed gentry, and a further 31-percent were the offspring of career soldiers, clergymen, or professional men.


• While a young lieutenant, Count Neidhardt von Gneisenau, who helped reform the Prussian Army during the Napoleonic Wars, soldiered for Britain as a "Hessian" in Canada during the American Revolution.


• During World War II the US produced nearly 300,000 aircraft of all types, at a cost of c. $45 billion, or roughly 25-percent of total munitons spending.


• About ten of the 70 or so Massachusetts militiamen who confronted the British on Lexington Common on April 19, 1776, were physicians.


• In 1914, the German Navy had to inactivate its entire 6th Battle Squadron, consisting of obsolete pre-dreadnoght battleships, in order to find sufficient officers to form the two-division strong Marine Korps Flandern, for occupation duty and operations on the Belgian Coast.


• In A.D. 375, a peace delegation from the barbarian Quadi acted so insolently that the Roman Emperor Valentinian I suffered an apoplectic seizure (i.e., a stroke) and died soon afterwards.


• In 1919 the budget of the Office of Naval Intelligence was slashed dramatically, so that the service had to eliminate the network of covert agents that it had built up during World War I, forcing it to rely solely on attaches, each of whom was, however, thoughtfully provided with a new Cadillac touring car to help him carry out his work.

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