Infinite Wisdom

"Son, in a naval battle if you are afloat when it’s over, you’ve won."

--	CPO Foster, USS Augusta (CA-31), When asked, “Did we win?”, The Naval Battle of Casablanca, November 8, 1942

La Triviata

• In 1914, 77-percent of the officers in the Imperial German Army ranking as corps commanders or higher were nobles with lineages reaching back into the Holy Roman Empire, while the remaining 23-percent held titles created since the foundation of the “Second Reich” in 1870.


• When King George III expressed his sympathies to Horatio Nelson for having lost his arm during an attempt to storm Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, on July 24,1797, the admiral casually replied, “I still have my right arm left.”


• Dispatched to conduct a campaign in Aetolia, western Greece, in 189 B.C., the Roman general Marcus Fulvius Nobilor took along the poet Quintus Ennius, to insure that his deeds would be properly celebrated in heroic verse.


• During the War of 1812, the British occupied much of Maine and remained in control until the end of the war, in the course of which they collected considerable sums in taxes and tariffs, enough, reportedly, to endow Dalhousie University, in Halifax.


• Léopold Sédar Senghor, the noted French poet, the first African to become a member of the Academie Française, and the first president of Senegal (1960-1980), served in the Tirailleurs senegalais during the campaign in France in 1940, during which he was almost murdered by his German captors upon being taken prisoner.


• Marcus Antonius Gordianus, who served briefly as co-emperor with his father, also M. Antonius Gordianus (1-20 Jan 238), until he fell in battle before the gates of Carthage, reportedly owned 62,000 books and had 22 concubines, though how he found time for either is difficult to determine


• The first decoration earned by Winston Churchill, was the Medalla Militar, Primero Classe, awarded for gallantry in an action a La Reforma, Cuba, on December 2, 1895, while he was serving as a journalist with the Spanish Army, which was fighting Cuban insurgents.


• Queen Salote Tupou of Tonga, although an enthusiastic supporter of the Allied cause during World War II, also seems to have some notion of sailors’ habits, and thus, learning that Task Force 17 was to drop anchor off her capitol, Nukuslofa, on April 20, 1942, ordered all the young women in the vicinity into the hills.

More...