Infinite Wisdom

"I’m sorry, I don’t understand such long words."

La Triviata

• Arriving by rail in Atlanta while en route home in 1899 after a successful tour of occupation duty in Cuba, the veterans of the all-black 3^rd North Carolina Volunteers were attacked and beaten by large numbers of local police officers and “special deputies,” to remind them of their "place", a fate shared by many other African-Americans returning from the war with Spain.
• During the First World War, 8,000 Britons were killed in flight training, a figure that not only exceeded the number British airmen killed in air combat, but apparently the grand total of all German, French, and American aviators killed in aviation accidents.
• When the royal party came under fire at the Battle of Koniggratz (July 3, 1866), Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck said to King Wilhelm I, "As a major I have no right to counsel your Majesty on the battlefield, but as Minister-President it is my duty to beg your Majesty not to seek evident danger!", to which the king, a veteran of Waterloo, replied with a smile, "How can I ride off when my army is under fire?"
• Within a month of the American declaration of war against Germany, in April of 1917, the U.S. Navy began operating from of bases in Ireland, and by mid-year about 45 of the fleet’s 66 destroyers -- some 70 percent -- were based there.
• In 1012, King Ethelred “the Unrede” of England (r. 978-1016) paid 48,000 pounds of silver as Danegeld -- protection money -- to a Danish horde camped in London, a figure that rose to 82,500 pounds by the end of his reign, after which King Canute of Denmark, having acquired the throne of England (r. 1016–1035), decided to end the practice.
• During the 1890s the U.S. Army's library system, created in 1879, had about 50,000 volumes, which circulated among the various garrisons, about two-thirds of which had dedicated reading rooms.
• Unusual for a German noblemen of his time, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1819-1861), the husband of Queen Victoria, had no formal military training, because his father Duke Ernest I, although a sovereign ruler, could only afford to send his elder son, the later Duke Ernest II, into the army.
• During World War II over 4,000 Argentinians served in the British armed forces, among them some 600 in the RAF, largely in No. 164 Squadron, which bore the sun from their national flag as its emblem.

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