Infinite Wisdom

"Gentlemen, do not be daunted if chaos reigns; it undoubtedly will."

La Triviata

• An estimated 250,000 Jewish people were saved from the Nazi Holocaust by the actions of diplomats from many countries, who handed out visas with a free hand, often contrary to the policies of their own governments.
• During the Second World War, British Boy Scouts helped erect some 40,000 Morison shelters, sturdy table-like steel frameworks which one well-drilled troop proved could put together in 16 minutes.
• A storm which, in early May of 1799 trapped Admiral Lord Keith’s squadron at Gibraltar for more than a week, not only caused extensive damage to his ships, but resulted the deaths of some 50 sailors by lightning.
• Reporting from the flagship Arkansas (BB-33) on Fleet Problem XII, held February 16^th through 20^th in 1931, New York Times military correspondent Hanson W. Baldwin filed 21 dispatches in just five days.
• During the Battle of Loos (Sept. 25-Oct. 14, 1915), the men of the Bavarian 16^th Reserve Infantry, Adolf Hitler’s regiment, threw some 5,000 hand grenades.
• Having (with Russian help) suppressed a Hungarian bid for independence in the summer of 1849, the Austrians found themselves with so many political prisoners that the Council of Ministers proposed leasing land in Siberia from the Tsar in order to house them.
• The largest U.S. Navy vessel lost during the Korean War was the 15,000-ton hospital ship Benevolence (AH-13), which sank on August 25, 1950 after a collision with a civilian cargo ship off San Francisco, with the loss of 18 of the nearly 550 crewmen, medical personnel, and others aboard; while the largest vessel lost to enemy action was the 1,300-ton fleet tug Sarsi (AT-11), which struck a mine on August 27, 1952, with the loss of four from her crew of 88.
• During the First World War, some 200,000 legal residents of the United States who were ineligible for the draft due to foreign citizenship waived their rights in order to serve. 

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