Infinite Wisdom

"Would it were for Ireland."

La Triviata

• In December of 1788, Lt. Phillip Gidley King, R.N., Commandant of Britain’s new colony at Norfolk Island, in what would become New South Wales, Australia, decided to form a militia, and thus ordered all free male settlers to practice musketry on Saturdays, though since most of the local residents were convicts, only six men were liable for duty.


• The bed in which Napoleon died on May 5, 1821, was the very same simple camp cot on which he had slept on the night of December 1, 1805, the eve of his great victory at Austerlitz.


• During World War II the Indian Army, the largest volunteer military service in history, fielded some 2.5 million men, including British personnel, and suffered some 1.06 million casualties, while accumulating 31 Victoria Crosses, 131 Military Crosses, 4 George Crosses, 252 Distinguished Service Orders, and 347 Orders of Merit, a rate of award that apparently exceeds that of any other Commonwealth force.


• King Ptolemy II Philadelphius of Egypt (309–246 BC), had a realistic-looking gold-leafed wooden phallus 180-feet long which he was wont to display on celebratory occasions, such as parades in Alexandria to celebrate his numerous victories, so that he could joke about having the biggest . . . .


• By the end of 1914 the City of Glasgow had raised three volunteer battalions for the Highland Light Infantry, one from the workers of the municipal tram service, one from the members of the local Boys’ Brigade, and one by the Chamber of Commerce.


• The administrative structure which John C. Calhoun created for the War Department while serving as Secretary in 1821 remained largely unchanged until 1903.


• Lowell Barrington’s The Admiral Takes a Wife, a service comedy set at Pearl Harbor, starring José Ferrer and Sara Seegar, with a very young Red Buttons in a minor role, had done well on tour, but had to be hastily cancelled just before its opening on Broadway, scheduled for December 8, 1941.


• The prototype of the “Stuka” dive bomber was produced by a German-owned “front” company in Sweden in 1928.

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