Infinite Wisdom

"I need a little help. I'm up here alone and I've got 50 MiGs cornered!"

La Triviata

• Due to wartime censorship, the American public never learned that the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 was actually more severe than the yellow fever epidemic that had devastated the V Corps during the Spanish-American War and became a public scandal.
• During the 1981-1988 Iran-Iraq War, Iraq fired approximately 260 Exocet anti-ship cruise missiles, mostly at commercial ships, plus two at the USS Stark (FFG-31).
• In 1950, second lieutenants in the U.S. Army were paid nearly $2,600 a year, which was just about median income for the average American household.
• From its formation in 1831 until 1940, over 40,000 Swiss served in the ranks of the French Foreign Legion.
• Because the grip of the Colt "Paterson" .36 Revolver Model 1850 was decorated with an engraving of the Battle of Campeche (May 16, 1843), in which the Texas Navy defeated the Mexican fleet, the pistol has come to be known as the "Navy Colt."
• From mid-1944 to the end of the Pacific War, U.S. aircraft carriers lost an average of four aircraft a month while not in flight due to accidents, mechanical breakdowns, or enemy action.
• The air movement of B-24s from the U.S. to Europe in 1943-1944, required 18 days, following a route from Florida to Trinidad, to northwestern Brazil, to Ascension Island, to the Gold Coast or Nigeria and thence across West Africa, making several stops, and then to Morocco, to begin the final leg to Britain, or to Egypt or Libya, if bound for Italy.
• When, in the late 1820s, three instructors at West Point protested to Washington about compulsory attendance at chapel, the Secretary of War resolved the problem by saying that he was far “from an desire to interfere in the least with their conscientious scruples,” and transferred them to remote frontier posts. 

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