Infinite Wisdom

"We shall win the greatest honor and glory that were ever won up to this time."

La Triviata

• The first woman to serve as a military pilot appears to have been Princess Eugenie Shakhovskaya, who flew reconnaissance missions for the Tsar in 1914, and later joined the Bolsheviks, eventually becoming their chief executioner in Kiev.


• Nearly half of all military equipment produced in the U.S. in 1941 was distributed through Lend Lease.


• When news of Napoleon’s escape from Elba reached London, in early March of 1815, the price of gold jumped from 83 shillings (c. $520 today) per ounce to 108 (c. $665), only to fall back to its original level immediately after June 18th, when the Battle of Waterloo was fought.


• Retooling to convert from building older model Kate torpedo bombers and Val dive bombers in favor of the more modern Jills and Judys, seriously impeded Japan’s ability to produce naval attack aircraft during 1942, so that the number of new bombers reaching the fleet in the course of the year plunged, reportedly to under 100, insufficient even to replace loses since Pearl Harbor.


• Of 35 men who operated corsairs against Christian shipping out of Algiers in 1581, 22 were renegade Christians, and three more the sons of renegades, the rest being Turks or Arabs.


• Napoleon once challenged Prince Massimo to prove that his family descended, as claimed, in unbroken line over 2,000 years back to the great Quintus Fabius Maximus, who flourished in the third century before the Christian era, whereupon the Roman nobleman, aware of the bogusness of the claim, nevertheless replied, “I can’t prove it, it is merely a rumor that has been around in our family for about 1,200 years,” thus neatly reminding the Emperor that his claims to nobility were considerably shallower.


• During World War II approximately 30-percent of New Zealand’s workforce was under arms, out of a population of only 1.6 million.


• In 1917, learning that King George V, bowing to public pressure to distance the dynasty from its German roots, had changed the name of the Royal Family to “Windsor,” Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany said that he wished to go to the theater to see The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

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