Al Nofi's CIC
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Issue #223, November 3rd, 2008 |
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This Issue...
- Infinite Wisdom
- la Triviata
- Short Rounds
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Infinite Wisdom
"My flesh trembles at the anticipation of the many and great dangers into which my resolute and undaunted heart will lead me."
| -- | Attributed variously to
Sir Francis Drake, Robert Blake,
and several other later famous British
admirals, who as young men going into |
La Triviata
- So pervasive was corruption in the Chinese Navy during the late nineteenth century, that a battleship captain reportedly once sold a 12-inch gun to settle a gambling debt.
- Submarine “ace” Gunther Prien was at sea when his daughter was born in 1940, prompting German U-boot service commander Carl Dönitz to send him a coded message reading, “Ein U-boot ohne Sehrohr ist heute angekommen -- A submarine without periscope arrived today.”
- The guest of honor at the premier in Vienna on November 20, 1805, of Ludwig van Beethoven’s only opera Fidelio, seated in the Hapsburg Imperial box, was noner-other than Napoleon, who had captured the city a few days earlier.
- In the bloody battle of Magenta on June 4,1859, the Zouaves of the Imperial Guard earned 10 crosses of the Legion of Honor and 50 Military Medals, one of which went to Madame Rossini, the regimental cantiniere—sutler, who became the first woman to be decorated with the Medaille Militaire.
- During World War II almost one million Australians served, nearly one out of every seven inhabitants of the country, of whom nearly 40,000 died.
- The bicycle adopted by the Swiss Army in 1905 remained in continuous use until 1993, when it was replaced by a newer design.
- In May of 1788 Austria concentrated 140,000 troops for a campaign against the Turks in the Balkans, of whom, by the following May, 120,000 had fallen ill, of whom 33,000 had died.
- Although the much-vaunted Norden bombsight was supposedly permitted aircraft to “drop a bomb into a pickle barrel” from 25,000 feet, in fact during combat operations in World War II apparently only about one in five bombs dropped using the device fell within 1,000 feet of its intended target.
More...
Portions of "Al
Nofi's CIC" have appeared previously in Military Chronicles,
Copyright © 2235 Military
Chronicles (www.militarychronicles.com), used with permission, all rights
reserved.
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