Infinite Wisdom

"You are ordering me to fight with a broken sword. Very well, we shall fight all the same."

La Triviata

• Having lost one comrade and all of their instruments on December 7, 1941, the bandsmen of the USS California (BB 44) volunteered to join Station Hypo, the cryptographic center at Pearl Harbor, and later helped break the Japanese naval code, which resulted in victory at Midway.
• The first occasion on which Ferdinand Foch wore his full dress uniform as a Marshal of France was for the formal interment of the American Unknown Soldier, at Arlington National Cemetery on Nov 11, 1921.
• During the Second World War, drogue parachutes for U.S. Army glider aircraft were manufactured by the American Lady Corset Company, which advertised that “If the Corset is not right . . . one's appearance can't be correct.”
• Upon capturing Algiers on July 7, 1830, the French government acquired about fr 48 million from the deposed Dey’s treasury, rather than the fr 500 million anticipated, the balance having disappeared into the pockets of the troops and their officers.
• Although not generally regarded as possessing any significant artistic merit, paintings by Adolf Hitler often fetch more than $1,000,000 when they come on the market.
• Roger Prigent (1923-2012), whose glamour shots often graced the covers of Vogue and other notable fashion magazines from the early 1950s to the late 1970s, learned photography while serving in reconnaissance aircraft for the Free French during World War II.
• Although firm evidence has never surfaced, an old tradition has it that during the early days of the American Revolution, Maj. Gen. Joseph Warren of Massachusetts, who commanded the militia from Lexington and Concord until Bunker Hill (where he was killed) was kept informed of enemy plans by Margaret Kemble Gage, the American-born wife of Thomas Gage, the British commander-in-chief in the colonies.
• In the late 1920s, the Spanish Army’s Servicio de criar caballar, which raised horses for military service, employed 17 percent of the cavalry officers in its dozen establishments, with the cost of a single animal running a bit over 4,000 pesetas, about the annual salary for a second lieutenant.

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