Infinite Wisdom

"We look to the benefit of our country and risk our own fame every day to serve her."

--	Horatio Nelson, on the officers of the Royal Navy

La Triviata

• The first American troops over the Ludendorf Bridge at Remagen were from the 165th Infantry, New York’s “Fighting 69th,” who crossed in 1918, as they entered Germany to undertake occupation duties.


• In the hope of creating a native corps of archers comparable to that of England, in 1448 King Charles VII of France ordered that one man in every parish be equipped as a bowman, and devote feast days to the practice of archery, an endeavor in which he met with miserable failure.


• Between January 1, 1940 and August 14, 1945, the United States spent $45 billion on aircraft, producing a total of 300,317, about one for every 434 Americans.


• Shortly after the War of 1812, Congress having adjourned without appropriating funds to carry West Point through another year, Superintendent Joseph G. Swift saved the Military Academy from closing by personally borrowing $65,000 at 7-percent interest, for which he would later battle with Congress for several years before receiving full compensation.


• The South African War saw the greatest number of troops Britain had ever dispatched overseas until 1914, fully 450,000 men in the 34 months beginning in August 1899, to fight an estimated 55,000 Boers.


• Assured by his astrologers that he was certain to win, in July of 792, the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VI attacked the Bulgarians at Markellai, in Thrace, and was soundly defeated, which was the outcome his generals had informed him was most likely.


• Wounded in the groin during Hitler’s 1923 Munich “Beer Hall” Putsch, Herman Goring sought medical aid in the home of a Jewish doctor, who also helped him escape the police.


• While on a raid up the Tuxpan River, in Mexico, on April 18, 1847, American sailors and marines captured the hacienda of Maj. Gen. Martin Perfecto Cos, brother-in-law of President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, in the process liberating a great deal of wine and champagne, with which they toasted the health of their missing host and his distinguished kinsman.

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