Infinite Wisdom

"It is said the warrior's is the twofold Way of pen and sword, and he should have a taste for both Ways."

La Triviata

• In addition to soldiering in several wars, serving in parliament for half-a-century, being a cabinet member for some decades, and prime minister for more than ten years, half of them leading history's greatest coalition in its most terrible war, Winston S. Churchill managed to find time to produce 74 volumes of history biography, speeches, and other works.
• During the 1820s in the West African Kingdom of Bornu a large war horse – 15 hands or more – could easily cost as much as seven slaves.
• The first wife of Austrian World War I submarine ace Captain Georg von Trapp, was Agathe Whitehead, granddaughter of Robert Whitehead, the inventor of the "automotive torpedo", with whom he had the children who made up the “Trapp Family Singers."
• By one recent estimate, for the nearly 400 million marks that the Third Reich spent to build the battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz, Germany could have procured over 2,500 Pz-IV battle tanks, or nearly as many fighter aircraft.
•  In 1801, 47 percent of the frigates in the Royal Navy were engaged in trade protection.
• Reportedly, the loot from the Emperor Trajan’s Second Dacian War (105-106), amounted to 5 million pounds of gold and 10 million of silver, worth perhaps $100 trillion today, but in ancient times relatively speaking several times more.
• By special arrangement between the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy, during the Barbary War (1801-1805) American warships did not interfere in the movement of supplies from Tripoli to the British base at Malta.
• Of the 162 million florins that Austria spent on defense in 1862, only 77 million (c. 48 percent) were expended on troops, training, fortifications, equipment, and ammunition, the rest going to administration and pensions.

More...