Infinite Wisdom

"Polo games and wars aren’t won by gentlemen."

La Triviata

• From August 29 to October 8, 1942, the Spanish volunteer "Blue Division" in German service marched from Suwalki in Poland to Vitebsk in the Soviet Union, a distance of some 1000 kilometers, for an average daily rate of march of about 25 kilometers, one of the greatest sustained marching efforts in the Second World War.
• Despite overseeing Britain’s global interests, in 1830 the Foreign Office had only about 30 people on its staff in London, including the Foreign Secretary.
• Reportedly, while on campaign Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson carried a copy of Napoleon’s Maxims in his saddle bags.
• After spending some time in the trenches in France and Italy disguised as a man, in 1915 Marie Marvingt (1875-1963), a French athlete, mountaineer, and aviation pioneer, openly qualified as a military pilot and undertook bombing missions over German-held territory, becoming the first woman to receive the Croix de Guerre for an air mission, after a raid on an enemy military installation at Metz.
• Although his armies are normally thought to have included masses of mounted warriors, there appears to be only one direct reference to an actual cavalry charge during the campaigns of Frankish King and later Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne (r. 768/800-814), in 782, which was defeated by Saxon infantry.
• At the height of operations against Rabaul, on New Britain in the southwest Pacific, in 1943-1944, an average of 3,000 tons of bombs were being dropped on the port each month.
• The outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), caused panic among some British officials who, fearing the Russians would use their mobilization for a war in the Far East to mask an invasion of India from Turkestan through Afghanistan, strengthened the Indian Army, a measure that proved quite useful in the war that would break out in 1914.
• In 1943, the motion picture The North Star, in which Dana Andrews leads a band of Soviet partisans against the Nazis, was nominated for six Academy Awards, but within four years was being condemned by the House Committee on Un-American Activities as Soviet propaganda. 

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