Infinite Wisdom

"Certainty . . . is not at all to be found in the pursuit of war."

La Triviata

• When Chief Guepotau of the Araucanians was killed in action by the Spanish in 1590 in what is now southern Chile, his wife, Janequeo assumed leadership of the tribe and carried on the war, inflicting such heavy losses on the enemy in men and money that Spain eventually decided to make peace rather than continue the struggle.
• When 15-year old Edward Hawke – later Admiral of the Fleet – joined the Royal Navy in 1720, his father said he hoped to live long enough to see him become a captain, to which the lad replied, “A captain! Sir, if I did not think I should come to be an admiral, I would not go at all.”
• Reportedly, every year on her birthday Kaiser Wilhelm gave his wife, the Empress Augusta Victoria, twelve hats, which he picked out himself, and thus were often in bad taste, but which he insisted she wear, a practice that continued until 1916, when she convinced him that in view of the ongoing world war it was essential that the Imperial family set a good example by eschewing luxuries.
• The final ceremony marking the accession of an Ottoman sultan to the throne took place in the Mosque of Ayoub in Constantinople, where the monarch was girded with the sword of Osman, who had founded the dynasty in 1299.
• While Commander-in-Chief of the British Army (1795-1809), Frederick Augustus, Duke of York and Albany, founded a maternity hospital for the wives of guardsmen and a school for a thousand children of British soldiers.
• Due to his frugality, while a student at the cadet school in Brienne (1779-1784), Napoleon was nicknamed “The Spartan.”
• During the 1880s, the militia batteries of the Royal Regiment of Artillery were grouped into eastern, southern, and western “divisions” to facilitate training, but for some inscrutable reason, the Scottish Highlands and the Orkney Islands were included in the southern division, while Northumberland and Yorkshire were in the western.
• In 1637 a treaty between the Emperor of China and the King of Korea stipulated that the latter was to supply as part of his annual tribute 5,000 rolls of special paper that was considered ideal for the fabrication of laminated armor, which had been in use in China since the Tang Dynasty.

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