Infinite Wisdom

"He is the best general who makes the fewest mistakes."

--	Sir Ian Hamilton, who made quite a few.

La Triviata

• During the Spanish-American War Uncle Sam paid privates $13.00 a month, with an extra $1.30 thrown in as “combat pay”.


• Of twelve men who held the honor of being a Marshal of France during the twentieth century, only one, Ferdinand Foch, created in August of 1918, actually commanded troops after having received his baton; all the other awards were confered either upon retirement or posthumously.


• On the eve of war with Britian in 1812, the average age of an American general was 60, a figure which by the end of the war in 1815, had been reduced to 36, with the youngest a mere 27 years and nine months.


• On the three days just prior to the British declaration of war against Germany on September 3, 1939, some 600,000 children were evacuated from London to safer areas in the countryside.


• Laure Permon, who became the Duchesse of Abrantes by Napoleon's favor to her husband, Andoche Junot, was such a troublemaker that the Emperor eventually forbade her to come within 50 leagues of Paris, for which she took her revenge by publishing 18 volumes of vitriolic "memoirs" after the fall of the Empire.


• It was not until 1837 that France agreed to settle American claims arising out of the “Quasi-War” of 1798-1800.


• The Battle of Cunaxa, in 401 B.C., in which a Greek mercenary army fought in the service of a usurper against the Shah of Persia, as recounted by Xenophon in his Anabasis, is believe by some scholars to have taken place on the site of what is now Baghdad International Airport.


• In 1482 a Venetian alchemist conducted experiments in the use of noxious gases as a weapon.

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