Infinite Wisdom

"That miserable Corsican; he wanted to finish me off and now he's done it."

--	General of Division Henri-Christian-Marie de Stengal, Mortally wounded at the Battle of Mondavi, commenting on the ineptitude of his commander, one Napoleone Buonaparte, April 21, 1796

La Triviata

• In 1774, on the eve of the War for Independence, merchant ships registered in the Thirteen Colonies totaled about 450,000 tons.


• To help celebrate the first anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, in November of 1940 the great Russian director Sergei Eisenstein staged an elaborate production of Wagner’s Die Walkure in Moscow.


• Between 1814 and 1868, there were apparently 34 coups, pronunciamientos, or other military interventions in political life by the Spanish Army, most of which failed.


• Between December 7, 1941, and April 5, 1942, the Japanese Imperial Army and Navy conducted operations across 123 degrees of longitude and 58 of latitude, in the process conquering more land and more people in a shorter time than any other military force in history.


• The Athenian general and author Xenophon (427-355 BC), was so particular about the quality of his equipment that his shield came from Argos, his breastplate from Attica, his helmet from Boeotia, and his horse from Epidaurus.


• Of 683 graduates from Princeton in 1942, 84-percent eventually served in uniform during World War II, either as officers or as enlisted men, among the latter of whom were both the salutatorian and the valedictorian.


• During the Nationalist assault on Madrid in the autumn of 1936, Maj. Gen. José Miaja, commanding the Republican defenders, was called on the carpet by War Minister Francisco Largo Caballero for authorizing the procurement of leather flight jackets for his fighter pilots without consulting the ministry.


• During the 1940 Campaign, German troops massacred an estimated 3,000 Africans who had been serving in the French Army, amounting to about 5-percent of all black French troops in the theater.

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