Al Nofi's CIC
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Issue #64, January 6, 2002 |
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This Issue...
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Infinite Wisdom
"There are times when men must die"
--Henry L. Stimson
La Triviata
- Between May and October of 1813, the American privateer Prince de Neufchatel, which operated out of Cherbourg, France, netted $3 million in prize, a sum perhaps equal to $500 million today.
- On December 6, 1917, the ammunition ship Mont Blanc collided with another vessel in Halifax harbor, with the result that a square mile of the city was leveled, several ships were sunk, and casualties by some estimates reached as high as 10,000.
- During his African Campaign in 48 B.C., Julius Caesar was alerted to an ambush by the neighing of one of the enemy's cavalry horses.
- Pperhaps 12,000 people starved to death between the lines during the siege of Rouen in 1418-1419, the garrison having driven all the "useless mouths" in the town outside the walls, while the gallant King Henry V of England refused to let them flee to safety.
- Owing to a shortage of machetes, during 1942-1943 the U.S. Army shipped thousands of surplus cavalry sabers to the South Pacific, which proved poor substitutes.
- During the Revolutionary War, Polish patriot Tadeuz Kosciuzko found Americans � including Congress � spelling his name variously as Kusiusco, Kusesko, Kuziake, Korsuasco, Cosyesco, Kosciosko, Cuziako, Cusiasko, Kosciuszko, Cosieski, Kosciousko, and Kosiusko, for the last of which George Washington seems to have a preference,
- While on a mission to gather supplies in southeastern Virginia during the Spring of 1863, Confederate Lt. Gen. James Longstreet quickly discovered that the "patriotic" citizens of the region were not above a little profiteering, and had raised the prize of a pound of bacon $.50 to $.75, and shortly to $1.00.
- At the end of World War I over 100,000 men in the U.S. Army bore the name "Smith"
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