Al Nofi's CIC
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Issue #69, March 2, 2002 |
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This Issue...
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Infinite Wisdom
"If we cannot secure our needs for survival on the basis of law and justice, then we must be ready to secure them with arms in our hands."
--Mihaly Marolyi
La Triviata
- The first U.S. Navy vessel with an electric propulsion, now commonplace, was the collier USS Jupiter, originally commissioned on April 7, 1913, and, again, after conversion into an aircraft carrier, on April 21, 1920, as the USS Langley (CV-1)
- King Demetrius II of Syria, was only 14 years old when he came to the throne in 145 B.C., after taking to the field at the head of an army to defeat the usurper who had overthrown his father.
- By 1915, Allied purchasing agents in the U.S. were procuring mules for roughly $167 a head, regardless of quality, equivalent to about $3,000 today.
- When the Spanish-American War broke out, in 1898, the youthful Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then a 16-year old student at Andover, plotted with several classmates to slip off and enlist in the Navy, only to be frustrated by an outbreak of scarlet fever, which imposed a tight quarantine on the school.
- A Japanese restaurant in Austin, Texas, that bears what would seem to be a politically incorrect name, Banzai!
- Bertie Felstead, formerly of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, last known survivor of the Christmas Truce of 1915, died on June 22, 2001, in Gloucester, England, at the age of 106.
- The Dutch merchant ship Jagersfountein chanced to arrive at Honolulu on the morning of December 7, 1941, during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and promptly lent a hand with her own anti-aircraft guns, thus making the Netherlands the first nation to stand by the U.S. in the Second World War.
- At the battle of Pharsalus (August 9, 48 B.C.), Pompey the Great followed the progress of his cavalry attack against Caesar's right flank by observing movement of the dust it raised, and was among the first to realize that it had been repulsed, as he saw the dust indicating its retirement.
- During World War II the number of cavalry divisions in the German armed forces rose 700-percent, from one to seven.
- The last pension for the War of 1812 was paid in 1946, to a disabled surviving dependent of a veteran.
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