Infinite Wisdom

La Triviata

• When George Washington’s body was reinterred in its present tomb at Mount Vernon in 1830, a workman secretly plucked two wispy hairs from the presidential head, which were sold at auction in June of 2012 for $5,581.25.
• During World War I, Madam Marie Sklodowska-Curie supervised the outfitting of 200 x-ray rooms for French military hospitals, and also directed the organization and operation of 20 motorized x-ray units, staffed mostly by women physicians, technicians, mechanics, and drivers.
• Between 1808 and 1848, about half of the annual U.S. budget went to fund the Army, and another 20 to 30 percent the Navy.
• During the 1830s the British Army had seven battalions of Guards infantry and 100 battalions of the line, but fully 70 lieutenant colonels of the Guards and only 126 of the line.
• The series of navy laws enacted between 1898 and 1915 would by the mid-1920s have given Germany a fleet of 41 battleships and 20 battle cruisers, all under 20 years old, plus obsolete vessels held in reserve.
• During the late 1930s Britain’s film industry averaged about 150 major releases a year, a figure that fell to a low of 46 in 1942 because of wartime shortages and need for cinema specialists and equipment by the armed services.
• Loot from the Roman conquest of Dacia in AD 105-106 amounted to a half million pounds of gold and a million of silver in money and metal, not to mention untold wealth in goods and slaves.
• During the Yalta Conference in early 1945, the site, the Livadia Place, was in rather poor condition due to combat damage and neglect during the Nazi occupation of the Crimea, causing Lt. Gen. Laurence Kuter, USAAF, to remark that, aside from the winding down the war, “the bathrooms were the most generally discussed subject . . . .”

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