Infinite Wisdom

"Better to live as an animal, than as a soldier."

La Triviata

• Since the International Date Line runs down the middle of the Pacific, the first Japanese attacks of the Pacific War, which were in Malaya, are dated on December 8, 1941, although they actually took place 95 minutes before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
• During a Roman triumph, the general being honored apparently had his face painted with red lead, which probably didn’t do much for his life expectancy.
• Around 1830 the principal occupation of the eight officers assigned to the Portuguese garrison at Lourenço Marques in East Africa was trading with the local people rather than soldiering, since that only took up a few hours a day.
• In 1915, France informally inquired if Japan would be interested in sending 500,000 troops to the Balkans.
• The earliest evidence of the use of dogs in warfare seems to date from about 600 B.C., when King Alyattes of Lydia employed a number of large fierce hounds in a battle against the invading Cimmerians, finding them particularly effective during the pursuit.
• Despite months of preparations, when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, slightly more than 38 percent of Germany’s ocean-going merchant shipping – 1.35 million grt out of 3.5 million – was in foreign waters, and promptly lost by internment, blockade, sinking, capture, or scuttling.
• In January of 1883, asked to comment on the recent death of Leon Gambetta, the great French minister who had rallied the country to carry on resistance against the Prussian invasion in 1870, Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke said, “I was extremely glad.”
• When Hernan Cortez ordered his ships burned in July of 1519, so that everyone in his expedition to conquer Mexico would understand that there could be no turning back, many of his men expressed their agreement by crying out the phrase used by Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon, “Alea iacta est – the die is cast.”

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