Infinite Wisdom

"War and storms are good to read about, but peace is better to live in."

--

Epicurus

La Triviata

• When, in 1938, the German Consul General in New York demanded "protection" from anti-Nazi protesters, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia arranged to create a special squad, headed by Captain Max Finkelstein, Lt. Jacob Lickers, and Sgt. Isaac Goldstein, who commanded a number of similarly-named officers.


• In November of 1918, King Ludwig III of Bavaria left his kingdom in quiet dignity, taking only a bunch of jewels wrapped up in a handkerchief and a box of cigars under his arm, while Kaiser Wilhelm II went into exile in the Netherlands accompanied by a dozen motor vehicles, plus a score of rail cars loaded with the necessities of life.


• Defeated in Oliver Cromwell’s genocidal campaign of 1649-1650, some 34,000 Irishmen fled their homeland, to take up service as mercenaries, quickly earning the nickname, "The Wild Geese."


• Formed largely of draftees from New York City, by the time it entered combat in 1918 the 77th Division could count men of 43 different nationalities and ethnic groups in its ranks, as a result of which it was sometimes known as "The Melting Pot Division."


• In 1800, the cost of the "purchase" of a the rank of cornet (second lieutenant) in the British cavalry ran £735, plus about £1000 for kit and necessaries, and a further £500 a year to keep up with expenses, at a time when the pay was only £146 a year!


• On the eve of the Revolutionary War, the Thirteen Colonies, with about a quarter of the population of Great Britain, nevertheless had a gross domestic product that ran about half that of the "Mother Country," and were actually producing more pig iron.


• At the outbreak of World War II, Hitler banned luxuries in his household, and even insisted that everyone use ration coupons, just like ordinary Germans.


• After a cruise to the eastern Mediterranean in 1860, Capt. Uriah P. Levy, of the USS Macedonian, brought back a "wagon load" of earth from Jerusalem, and donated it to his synagogue; some of the soil still remains, despite the fact that for nearly 150 years now members of Congregation Shearith Israel of New York have been interred in a little bit of the Holy Land.

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