Infinite Wisdom

"Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears."

La Triviata

• Having conquered France in the late Spring of 1940, Hitler spent part of June 23^rd visiting Paris with some of his more artistically-inclined henchmen, and most of the 25^th and 26^th on the old German lines along the Somme, with some of his alter kameraden from World War I.
• Between 1793 and 1801 some 45,000 British troops died in the West Indies, almost all from disease.
• A post-war analysis of the effectiveness of U.S. Navy anti-aircraft weapons against kamikaze concluded that the most valuable was the 40-mm gun, which accounted about half of all suicide attackers shot down, followed by the 20-mm gun, at 27 percent, and the famous 5-inch/38 dual purpose cannon close behind at about 20 percent.
• During World War I Britain commissioned nearly 200 "Q-Ships" -- armed decoys intended to lure German submarines to their destruction -- which collectively accounted for only eleven u-boats, while losing several of their number in return.
• Having vowed “not to leave even a dog alive” when the city of Tyana, in Asia, resisted his advance, after it fell the Roman Emperor Aurelian (270-275), relented, and ordered that only the dogs be slain.
• Following the Battle of Lundy's Lane (July 25, 1814), the wounded American Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott and the wounded British Maj. Gen. Phineas Riall, who had been captured by American forces, were not only treated by the same surgeons, but also shared a hospital room for a time.
• During the Third Anglo-Afghan War (1919), Afghan agents secured some success in stirring up tribal disorders in the Northwest Frontier Provinces of India by spreading rumors that Germany had resumed hostilities against the Allies and that there had been an uprising against British rule in Egypt.
• Having captured Berlin in October of 1807, Napoleon visited the tomb of Frederick the Great's at the palace of Sans Souci, slept in the late king's bed, and then, upon leaving reportedly swiped the royal alarm clock, but left Old Fritz's sword, saying that he already had a good one.

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