Infinite Wisdom

"Come, come, Prince, you must have that deck better swabbed."

La Triviata

• Approximately 800,000 women served in the Soviet armed forces during World War II, about half of whom were draftees.
• During the Seven Years’ War, the purchase of a colonelcy in the French Army ran anywhere from 22,500 to 120,000 livres, depending upon the fashionability of the regiment in question, worth perhaps $2,500,000 to $13,250,000 in today’s dollars.
• Of about 3,500 generals and admirals in the German armed forces in mid-1944, five were active members of the plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20^th, about 15 others provided passive support, and many more knew about the conspiracy but were too cowardly either to support or report it.
• In September of 1855, during the British and French occupation of Sebastopol after a long siege, a Zouave seen making off with a large tom-cat explained that he wished to give to his grandmother to replace one which the Russians had stolen when they occupied Paris in 1815.
• In World War II American submarines spent 31,571 days on patrol in the Pacific, attacking 4,112 Japanese controlled merchant ships with 14,748 torpedoes, which resulted in the sinking of 1,152.5 vessels, totaling 4,859,634 gross tons, or an average of 329.5 tons for every torpedo expended.
• By the end of 1812, out of some 1,050 who had begun the Russian Campaign, Napoleon's Grenadiers á cheval numbered only 127 men.
• On average, nearly 10 percent of the crew of a British man-o’-war during the Eighteenth Century consisted of boys, often as young as ten, serving as officers’ servants, powder monkeys and cabin boys, while learning to be sailors.
• Despite supposed hostility from the Navy’s brass, the proportion of aviation-rated personnel in the U.S. fleet rose from about 2 percent of total manpower at the beginning of the 1920s to 20.4 percent by 1939, increasing annually even in years when budget cuts reduced total manpower.

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