Infinite Wisdom

"Dextra Domini fecit virtutem, Dextra Domini exaltavit me" ("The right hand of God gave me courage, The right hand of God raised me up")

--	Roger de Hauteville, Count of Sicily, 1071-1101

La Triviata

• Early in 1812, Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton requested funds to build 12 ships-of-the-line and 20 frigates, which was rejected by Congress, despite the fact that war with Britain seemed imminent.


• Upon mobilization in 1939, so many French industrial workers were called up that aircraft and tank production fell markedly, necessitating the release from the service of some 550,000 men.


• Apparently during the Napoleonic Wars the men of the “elite“ grenadier and light companies of British infantry battalions referred to their comrades in the “ordinary” line companies as “grubbies” or “flatfoots.”


• Having inherited the throne of an unruly kingdom on the untimely death of his older brother, King Jaime I of Aragon (r., 1213-1276), later surnamed “the Conqueror,” found it necessary to take the field against rebellious barons, an undertaking in which, with the help of some able advisors, he was quite successful despite the fact that he was only 11.


• The last major coal burning warship in the Royal Navy was the battlecruiser Tiger, a stately looking veteran of Jutland that was in first line service until 1931.


• During the Second World War the Soviet Union produced 265,000 cars and trucks, which were supplemented by some 409,500 more provided by the United States through Lend Lease.


• The phrase “no-man’s land” seems to have been coined by Ernest Dunlop Swinton (1868-1951), a British army officer and military writer, who also lent a hand in the invention of the tank and ultimately retired as a major general with a knighthood and string of decorations.


• A dubious tradition has it that when Lord Nelson was about embark on the Copenhagen expedition in 1801, he asked the Earl of St. Vincent, First Lord of the Admiralty, for instructions, and was told, “Damn it, Nelson, send them to the Devil your own way!”

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