Infinite Wisdom

"There are no simple wars."

La Triviata

• Reportedly, during one wartime Allied summit conference Winston Churchill’s American hosts, unable to find a supply of his favorite Romeo y Julietas or Aroma de Cubas, put bands from them on cheaper stogies in an attempt to fool him, reportedly causing the Prime Minister to cut back on smoking for a few days.
• Following Lincoln’s initial call for volunteers on April 15, 1861, spontaneous patriotic demonstrations broke out all across the North, so that just three days later The Detroit Free Press reported “ . . . the supply of bunting is rapidly becoming scarce."
• The British Commonwealth military cemetery on Lone Pine Hill at Gallipoli is apparently built on site of an ancient Roman army camp.
• During the Great War, although the warring nations spurned Pope Benedict XV’s calls for an end to hostilities (each side claiming he was favoring the other), the pontiff did manage to prod them into arranging prisoner exchanges for tens of thousands of wounded men, including 30,000 victims of gas attacks, who were treated in Switzerland, while the Vatican’s diplomatic corps handled over 600,000 pieces of correspondence, including inquiries about prisoners-of-war, repatriation petitions, and more.
• As part of preparations for Operation Olympic, the proposed invasion of Japan in November of 1945, the U.S. Marine Corps seems to have initiated the formation of a 7^th Marine Division.
• Citing “national security,” the British Home Office has yet to release some records of intelligence and police activity related to the Irish nationalist bombing campaign in the U. K. during the 1880s, probably because some of the incidents were caused by government agents and some of those executed for such acts had been framed.
• Save for about eight years around the end of Peloponnesian War (i.e., c. 405-397 BC), the Athenian Navy dominated the seas for 158 years and one day, from the Battle of Salamis on the 19^th of the month of Boedromion (c. Sept. 29) in 480 BC to the occupation of the city’s main naval base by the Macedonians on the 20^th of Boedromion, 322 BC.
• During the 1870s the average number of disciplinary proceedings in the Royal Navy was 1.6 per enlisted man per year, far lower than in the days of the lash.

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