Infinite Wisdom

"A general must be shot or befriended - but never hurt."

La Triviata

• As a consequence of the service of his great-great-grandfather Reuben Murray in the Connecticut and New York militia during the Revolutionary War, Winston S. Churchill was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, an honor not possessed by many presidents of the United States.
• The 24-spoked wheel that appears on the Indian flag is based on one that which appears on a sandstone capital erected by the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka (r. 273-232 B.C.), at Sarnath, in what is now the state of Uttar Pradesh.
• During the reign of Napoleon III (1852-1870), only about 8 percent of the officers in the French Army were members of the nobility.
• On October 18, 2008, the Royal Armouries Museum at Leeds held a day-long seminar on the career of Sir Harry Flashman VC, as a tribute to the late George MacDonald Fraser, creator of the fictional Victorian rogue.
• Confronting a captured pirate chieftain, Alexander the Great demanded to know by what right the man had to plunder innocent people, to which the fellow replied, “Because I do it with a little ship, I am called a robber, whereas you who do it with a great host are called king of kings."
• A regiment of 600 cavalrymen raised in Naples in 1690 for duty with the Spanish Army in Lombardy, ended up serving as infantry because no ships could be found to transport their horses.
• In A.D. 129, the treacherous King Pharasmanes II of Iberia (today Georgia) sent Hadrian 300 richly embroidered robes as a gift, which, as an expression of his contempt, the Emperor used to clothe criminals sentenced to death in the arena.

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