Infinite Wisdom

"The master of the sea must inevitably be master of the empire."

La Triviata

• At the height of the Empire (c. AD 100-180), a Roman legion seems to have required 1,370 amphorae of olive oil a year, roughly 94,000 kilos, the yield of about 14,400 trees.
• The U.S. Army’s Ambulance Service Section 646, received more French honors during the First World War than any other American unit; six awards of the Fourragere aux couleurs de la Croix de guerre, four with palm, one with a gold star, and one with a silver star, to indicate four army level awards, one corps-level award, and one division level one.
• During the 105-day “Winter War” in 1939-1940, the Soviets suffered a daily average of 1,252 dead, 2,523 wounded, 1,259 frostbite cases, 52 captured, and about 114 missing, a rate of casualties nearly three times greater than those France suffered during the 302-day Battle of Verdun in 1916, while Finnish daily losses were about 213 dead, 412 wounded, and 8 captured.
• In the early 1850s, Austrian general Julius Jacob von Haynau (1786-1853) (who had earned the nicknamed “Hyena” for having women and even children flogged while suppressing rebellions in Hungary and Italy in 1849) visited London, where one day some draymen in Park Street, Southwark, threw him into a barrel of ale, which shocked Queen Victoria, amused Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston, but so impressed revolutionary hero Giuseppe Garibaldi that he personally congratulated the men.
• Of the 18,946 men who volunteered in the summer of 1941 for service against Russia with the Spanish “Blue Division”, over 85 percent were university students or veterans of the Spanish Civil War.
• Robert H. Weir, who painted, among many other works, the“Embarkation of the Pilgrims” which hangs in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, taught drawing at West Point from 1833 until 1877.
• During the British retreat before the Japanese invaders in Malaya in December 1941-January 1942, personnel of the Federated States Railways sabotaged much equipment and numerous installations, including hundreds of miles of track, 185 locomotives and over 5,000 wagons.
• Field Marshal John, Earl Ligonier (1680-1770) had a long and distinguished career in the British Army but, while often in the thick of things, was never once wounded more than slightly; at Malplaquet (Sep. 11, 1709) despite his clothing being pierced by 23 bullets he was completely unharmed.

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