Infinite Wisdom

"If I had had an English army, I would have conquered the universe."

La Triviata

• Shortly before World War I, Winston S. Churchill purchased an American Colt M. 1 .45 automatic pistol, which remained his personal side arm for the next 50 years.
•  During the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), during which many company officers were former enlisted men, an average of about two of the more than 200 generals in the French Army had also risen from the ranks.
•  Reportedly, during the early stages of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, President/Dictator Porfirio Diaz, who had proven an excellent commander against the French and their Hapsburg puppet emperor in the 1860s, planned operations against the rebels in the north using a postal service map.
• The first, and only occasion on which General of the Air Force Henry "Hap" Arnold wore USAF's blue uniform was in January of 1950, for his funeral.
• In A.D. 90, learning that Sallustius Lucullus, the governor of Roman Britain had allowed a new type of weapon to be named the “lucullan lance”, the Emperor Domitian (r. A.D. 81-96) promptly recalled the man and had him executed, for usurping the imperial authority over military matters.
• On the eve of the outbreak of World War I, in 1914, the Russian small arms factory at Tula, southwest of Moscow, had the capacity to manufacture 50,000 rifles a month, but was only producing five.  
• It seems likely that the literacy rate in the French Army during most of the Napoleonic era was about 50 percent, though toward the end of the wars several German armies may have reached or even exceeded this level due to conscription and avid volunteering.
• Early in the First World War, Canadian Army planners believed they could recruit 60,000 volunteers from "the neighboring republic," and actually attempted to form a five battalion "American Legion," but managed to raise only about 1,600 men, a fifth of whom soon deserted, though many Americans serve individually the army as a whole.

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