Infinite Wisdom

"Upon our naval supremacy stands our lives and the freedom we have guarded for nearly a thousand years."

La Triviata

• Reportedly, during the summer of 1941, upon learning that his Carrier Division 2 (Hiryu and Soryu), might not be included in the Pearl Harbor strike force, Rear Adm. Tamon Yamaguchi got so drunk he attacked Vice-Adm Chuichi Nagumo, putting him in a headlock before being pried loose. 


• Fidel Castro’s daughter Alina Fernández-Revuelta (b. 1956), fled Cuba in 1993 and now lives in the United States, where she is an open critic of her father’s regime.


• On November 22, 1946, over 150 soldiers from the 1^st Battalion, 351^st Infantry, 88^th Infantry Division, stationed at Trieste, Italy, entered Switzerland to support rescue and recovery operations following the crash of an American air transport, becoming thereby the first foreign troops to operate on Swiss soil since Napoleonic times.


• On May 15, 1943, the USS Nields (DD-616) sank the German submarine U-616 in the southwestern Mediterranean, after a four day air-sea search by British and American forces.


• The common Roman symbol for an auction was a spear, harking back to the sale of booty in wartime.


• Of 34 U.S. Army officers who commanded corps during World War II, 33 had graduated from the Command and General Staff College, 14 of whom had returned to teach there, and 29 had also graduated from the Army War College.


• John Shalikashvili is the only foreign-born American to have attained four star rank, and the only draftee to have served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1993-1997).


• Although the Soviet Union actively supported the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), supplying arms in great numbers, crafty old Joe Stalin routinely overcharged as much as 40-percent for the equipment, and demanded payment in gold, which netted some 500 tons of the yellow stuff.

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