La Triviata

• To encourage volunteers, during the first two years of the Great War, 54 million recruiting posters were distributed in the British Isles, approximately five for every four inhabitants of the United Kingdom.
• May 8, 1945, the day German surrendered, was President Harry S Truman’s 61^st birthday.
• In 1757 the great Maria Teresa of Austria and Hungary decreed that officers who had rendered meritorious service for 30 years were to be raised to the hereditary nobility, tacitly admitting the importance of the middle class and even lower class to the effectiveness and efficiency of the Hapsburg armies, particularly since there were not enough scions of noble families to lead her troops.
• So heavy were Roman casualties at the hands of the Carthaginians during the first 18 months or so of the Second Punic War, that by the end of the Battle of Cannae (August 2, 216 B.C.) more than half the members of the Senate had perished, 177 men.
• During sailing races off Guantanamo for the fleet championship in 1934, the crew from the USS Mississippi (BB-41) decided to liven things up by dressing as pirates.
• Austro-Hungarian Emperor-King Franz Joseph (r., 1848-1916), rarely indulged in sweets, but when he chose to nosh would dunk lady fingers in champagne.
• Apparently, when unexploded ordnance is discovered in Germany, the Bundesrepublik pays for its removal if it is of German origins, but if it’s Allied stuff, the bill falls to the state government.
• The logo of the Navy’s Seabees – a bee toting a Thompson sub-machine gun, a hammer, and a wrench – was designed by Raymond L. Richmond, who having survived the loss of the Oklahoma (BB-37) at Pearl Harbor, was sent to New York for recuperation and recruiting duty, and while there studied commercial art in his spare time, later becoming a noted illustrator.

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