Infinite Wisdom

"The offensive is fire which advances, the defensive is fire which stops."

--	Henri Philippe Petain

La Triviata

• Some 500 of the 2,500 English seamen on an expedition to the West Indies in 1595 died of dysentery, including the fleet’s commanders, two of Queen Elizabeth’s greatest sea dogs, Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins.


• In 1889 Lt. Eberhard von Mantey, of the Imperial German Navy, charged with drawing up plans for war against the United States, argued that it would require just three battalions of infantry plus one of engineers to capture New York City.


• The Mexican War cost the U.S. about $63 million, or roughly $663 for each of the approximately 95,000 men who served during the conflict.


• Hitler’s vaunted “West Wall” – better known as the “Siegfried Line” – included some 20,000 bunkers, entrenched positions, and tank emplacements on a 940-mile front stretching from the German-Swiss border near Basel northwards


• In 1627 Arab corsairs from Algiers and Tunis raided Iceland, carrying some 300 people off into slavery in North Africa.


• So formal was Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary that once, while having an asthma attack, he refused the services of his physician until the man donned appropriate court dress.


• Although in 1776 only 504 of the 2,158 residents of the town of Brookhaven, on New York’s Long Island, were white men of military age, at least 270 of them served during the American Revolution, an extraordinarily high rate of military participation.


• The Duke of Wellington is the only man who ever served as Lord High Constable of England at three coronations; that of George IV in 1820, of William IV in 1831, and Victoria in 1838

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