Infinite Wisdom

"For what can be done against force without force?"

La Triviata

• In 1800, a lieutenancy in a British cavalry regiment cost about £1,000, more or less what it also cost for uniforms and equipment, not counting the £500 a year necessary to keep up with expenses, while annual pay was only £164 5s, at a time when the pound was worth about $82 in terms of the modern CPI, but more like $1,365 using the “minimum wage” scale.


• During World War II, Johanna "Magda" Goebbels, the wife of German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, insisted on serving only the simplest refreshments at receptions, and routinely collected ration coupons from her guests.


• The Battle of the Ford of the Biscuits, on August 7, 1594, was so-named after the large supply of rations abandoned by the English as they retreated from the Irish under Hugh Maguire.


• The "perpetual" pension granted to Lord Nelson and his heirs in 1805 lasted only until 1945, when it fell victim to cost cuts by the new Labour Government.


• Although Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803) had a distinguished career in the French Army, rising to brigadier general while being credited by some with the invention of the howitzer and even with organizing the “Cannonade of Valmy,” he is best known for having written Les Liaisons dangereuses (Paris: 1782), the famous novel about decadence, love, and death in Bourbon France.


• The brothers Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart, both Republican Members of Congress from Florida, are nephews of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro through his first wife.


• Nearly a quarter – 23 – of the first 100 graduates of West Point were from Vermont.


• When, in 1916, at the height of the Great War, Carl I was crowned Emperor of Austria, the coronation feast featured nineteen courses, served on gold platters, including venison pâté with truffles, spit-roasted duck, trout, quail in aspic, and more, as well as numerous fine wines, of which the young monarch partook only of one glass of champagne before sending the lot to be served to the wounded in the military hospitals around Vienna.

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