Infinite Wisdom

"Here hang as gifts from Promachus to thee, Phoebos, his crooked bow and quiver that delights in arrows; but his winged shafts, the deadly gifts he sent his foes, are in the hearts of men on the field of battle."

La Triviata

• During the reign of Frederick the Great (1740-1786), a newly appointed captain in the Prussian infantry had to purchase his company’s weapons from his predecessor, at a cost of some 800 thalers, about five years’ pay for a senior lieutenant.
• There is a tale that while plebes at West Point, Dwight D. Eisenhower and another cadet, having been ordered by an upper classman to report for some extra duty wearing “full dress coats,” impishly interpreted their instructions literally, and showed up wearing only the coat.
• In 1887, French Admiral Louis-Henri Brown de Colstoun neglected to invite a prominent local family to a ball he gave aboard his flagship while anchored off St. Malo, and found himself the object of a major parliamentary inquiry.
• American diplomats at the 1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference proposed the universal abolition of tanks, which met with approval from Army Chief-of-Staff Douglas MacArthur, who argued that tanks were “offensive weapons” not needed by the United States.
• During World War I, Austro-Hungarian aircraft conducted 343 bombing raids on Italian cities, targeting not only industrial establishments, but also artistic and historical treasures such as the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice, while causing 984 deaths and 1,193 injuries.
• During her tour of North America in 1942, the Red Army’s famous “girl” sniper Lyudmilla Pavlichenko (with a score standing at 309), was presented with a special Winchester rifle and an advanced optical sight by some admirers in Toronto.
• Champagne being deemed an inferior fluid, at the christening of the battleship HMS Hibernia on June 17, 1905, the ship’s sponsor, Lady Ormonde, wielded a bottle of the finest Irish whiskey.
• During World War I, the 77^th Division adopted the nickname “New York’s Own,” due to the origins of most of its draftees, which was greatly resented by the men of the state’s National Guard outfits, the 27^th Division and the 165^th Infantry, which served in the 42^nd Division.
• In 1898 Minnesota, having raised eleven infantry regiments during the Civil War, decided to number its regiments for the war with Spain the 12^th, 13^th, and 14^th; but rather than merely renumber the three existing militia regiments, designations were allocated on the basis of their colonels’ seniority, so the 2^nd Minnesota Militia became the 12^th Minnesota Volunteers, the 1^st became the 13^th, and the 3^rd the 14^th.

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