Infinite Wisdom

"I learnt what one ought not to do, and that is always something."

La Triviata

• On January 27, 1912, an French Army staff study declared that aviation was "an indispensable instrument for our armies in the field" and proposed the expansion of the current aircraft inventory from 120 machines, plus 40 on order, by 328 more.
• Lest any "pure Aryan" bear the stigma of illegitimacy, in November of 1941, the German government decreed that women who bore children out of wedlock to servicemen who were killed in action were to be granted "post mortem" certificates of marriage.
• At one point during the Battle of Albuera (May 16, 1811), a French cavalry charge was pressed with such determination that it reached Lt. Gen. William Beresford’s position, and he was forced to defend himself by grabbing one of the lancers by the throat and hurling him to the ground.
• On the eve of World War II, the British defense officials estimated that a determined German air campaign would inflict over 600,000 dead, which turned out to be about ten times more than the actual number of those killed in the United Kingdom from the “Blitz” of 1940-1941 through the V-1 and V-2 attacks of late 1944-1945.
•  At least one woman was killed serving in the Confederate ranks at Gettysburg, her body being discovered by a Union burial detail shortly after the battle.
• On average, during the 1,567 days of World War I, every Swiss soldier spent about 600 days on active duty, protecting the confederation’s neutrality.
• On July 1, A.D. 69, while general Titus Flavius Vespasianus’s legions were engaged in the First Romano-Jewish War, Tiberius Julius Alexander (a Jewish nobleman from Alexandria who was serving as governor of Egypt) declared Vespasian Roman emperor even before Vespasian's own legions did.
• The first major warship sunk in action by air attack was the 7,700 ton German light cruiser Königsberg, done in by Royal Navy Air Service Skua dive bombers in the harbor of Bergen, Norway, on April 10, 1940.

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