Infinite Wisdom

"Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result."

La Triviata

• Following Pompey the Great’s triumph on Dec. 29, 71 BC for his victories in Spain, he held a banquet, which opened with appetizers that included 5,000 specially raised thrushes, worth 3 denarii each, or nearly a week’s pay for a legionary soldier, a good bit of change for the Roman equivalent of Buffalo wings.
• From 1934 through 1940 the U.S. Army War College graduated 657 officers, of whom 436 (about two thirds) became generals.
• During the Civil War, men of German extraction comprised an estimated 9- to 20-percent of the Union armies, but only about 2 percent of the generals (eight with one star and three with two), some of whom achieved a measure of prominence – or notoriety – such as Ludwig Blenker, Franz Sigel, and Carl Schurz.
• During the Nine Years’ War (1688-1697), Louis XIV of France managed to bribe some of the smaller states of the Holy Roman Empire to supply no more troops to the imperial army beyond their minimum legal obligation.
• Only about 11 percent of the men in the Ottoman Army during World War I were literate.
• Although the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 23, 1939, allocated Finland to Stalin’s sphere of influence, when the Russians invaded that country weeks later, Hitler covertly arranged to help the Swedes send military materiel to the gallant Finns, while his henchman Mussolini sent equipment openly.
• Chiefly remembered as the lady who financed Columbus’ voyages and expelled the Jews from Spain, Queen Isabel I of Castile (r. 1474-1504) commanded on campaign on numerous occasions, notably during a civil war in 1474-1479 and in the final wars of liberation from Moorish domination in Spain (1482-1492), often leading her troops in full armor, once while pregnant.
• Adolf Hitler had a fondness for Walt Disney’s Snow White, which was based on an old German folk tale, and not only kept a copy in his private film collection but made sketches of the seven dwarfs, which today are in a museum in Sweden.
• In 1915, Ernesto Nathan (1845-1921), who had served as the first Jewish mayor of Rome (1907-1913), volunteered for service at the front, fighting in the Dolomite Alps, and ended the war as a lieutenant and liaison officer with a British medical unit.

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