Infinite Wisdom

"The United States has discovered that, while destroying a regime is relatively straightforward, building a state is complex and uncertain of success."

La Triviata

• As was customary in all navies, the shells the Japanese battleships fired at the U.S. escort carriers during the Battle off Samar, Oct. 25, 1944, contained dyes of various hues, so that each ship could track the fall of its shot by the color of the splashes, which prompted an American sailor to shout, "They're shooting at us in Technicolor!"
• Of seven Jewish men serving in the Bavarian 16^th Reserve Infantry, Hitler’s regiment, in October of 1916, three were killed in action and three were awarded the Iron Cross.
• In the aftermath of Octavian’s defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium (Sept. 2, 31 BC), the future Emperor Augustus was offered but refused gold “victory crowns” by hundreds of cities across the Roman world, weighing together some 35,000 Roman pounds, worth about 150 million sesterces, enough money to maintain nearly 38 legions under arms for a year.
• At one point during the Second World War, learning that American troops stationed in Iceland had run out of beer, Army Chief-of-Staff George C. Marshall ordered the immediate shipment of 40,000 cases.
• A radio version of The War of the Worlds broadcast in Chile on November 12, 1944, caused widespread panic and in one province troops were mobilized to cope with the “invaders”.
• Although by 1914 they had been preparing for more than a decade to violate Belgian, Dutch, Luxembourg, and possibly even Swiss neutrality in the event of war with France, the German Great General Staff never bothered to ask the Foreign Ministry about the potential consequences of such plans, nor even mention that they existed.
• When Capt. Zebulon Pike measured the mountain in Colorado that bears his name in 1806, he estimated its height at about 18,000 feet, about 4,000 too tall, and also got its location wrong by about 35 miles; he never learned about his errors as he had an unfortunate encounter with a cannon ball while serving as a brigadier general in the Battle of York (Toronto), in Canada, on April 27, 1813.
• In September 1918, Dwight D. Eisenhower, just 27 and only three years out of West Point, was a temporary lieutenant colonel commanding over 10,000 troops at the Tank Corps training center at Camp Colt, near Gettysburg,  having declined a promotion to colonel in the vain hope of getting overseas before the war ended.

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