Infinite Wisdom

"The necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent need not be further urged – All that remains for me to add is that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible."

--	George Washington to Col. Elias Drayton, July 26, 1777

La Triviata

• Established in 1938, during World War II the United States Merchant Marine Academy, at King’s Point, Long Island, lost 68 graduates killed in action, as well as 142 cadets.


• The capture of the British squadron on Lake Champlain following the Battle of Plattsburgh on September 11, 1814, the decisive battle of the War of 1812, yielded what was probably the larger amount of prize ever awarded in U.S. naval history $329,000, nearly $60 million in modern money on the “unskilled wage” scale, of which Capt. Thomas MacDonough, commander of the American squadron, received $22,807, perhaps $4 million.


• Beginning in 1894 William “Buffalo Bill” Cody regularly included in his “Wild West Show” some veterans of the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments, the “Buffalo Soldiers,” who, though rarely featured nevertheless provided a black presence in what was already a racially rather diverse troupe.


• On July 9, 1953, Naval Reservist Richard M. Nixon enrolled in the Naval War College correspondence course, which he completed about two years later, despite having to perform his normal duties as Vice-President.


• Having worked hard to convince the War Ministry that the troops needed a maneuvering ground, in 1887 Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf, Chief-of-Staff of the Austro-Hungarian IV Corps, at Lemberg, was permitted to rent an area measuring only 3,000 meters by 1,000, a little over a square mile.


• In 1817, two years after the final fall of Napoleon, the Royal Navy, which in 1812 had 98 ships-of-the-line in commission, plus over 400 other vessels, manned by some 130,000 officers and men, could count only 13 liners and perhaps 150 other vessels in commission, with but 20,000 personnel.


• From April of 1917 through November of 1918, the period of American participation in World War I, more than 1,600 vessels, carrying over 345-million tons of explosives, sailed from the port of New York for European battlefields


• During the latter part of the Spanish Civil War, the backbone of the Nationalist tank force comprised some 80 captured BT-5 tanks, amounting to a quarter of the 332 that the Republican forces had received from the Soviet Union.

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