Infinite Wisdom

"It is upon the Navy under the good Providence of God that the Wealth, Safety, and Strength of the Kingdom do chiefly depend."

--	The Articles of War, Enacted by Parliament, 1661

La Triviata

• At the end of his third year at West Point (1935), Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., the only black cadet, was recommended for promotion to cadet officer, which was rejected by Commandant Simon B. Buckner, the son of a Confederate general.


• During his military career, Marcus Servilius Pulex Geminus, who served as Roman consul in 202 B.C., reportedly challenged and defeated 23 enemy champions in single combat.


• In 1937 the German Army appointed its first official military advisor to the Hitlerjugend, a lieutenant colonel named Erwin Rommel.


• So furious was the Chinese government with a pusillanimous naval officer who had taken his ship out of the fight during the Battle of the Yalu (September 14, 1894) without firing a shot, that it had him beheaded, despite the fact that he was already dead, having poisoned himself.


• Until shortly before World War II, Texas law prohibited “members of the Regular Army” from voting in state elections, thus classifying them with convicted felons and insane persons.


• In November of 1936, during the early stages of the Spanish Civil War, a number of high ranking Republican ministers were making their way out of Madrid, which seemed likely to be captured by the approaching Nationalists, when they were intercepted east of the city by anarchist militiamen from the “Del Rosa Column,” who threatened to execute them for desertion, but were convinced to let them go, arguably to the detriment of the Loyalist war effort.


• The famous Irish nationalist Charles Stewart Parnell, who twisted the English lion’s tail repeatedly in an effort to secure home rule for his native sod, was the son of Delia Stewart Parnell, the daughter of Charles Stewart, who as captain of the USS Constitution during the War of 1812, had done some twisting of his own.


• Perhaps the most unusual amenity ever provided in an American aircraft carrier was the working fireplace that adorned the captain's cabin aboard the USS Saratoga (CV-3), during her first years in service.

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