Al Nofi's CIC
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Issue #113 May 5, 2003 |
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This Issue...
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Infinite Wisdom
"Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier."
La Triviata
- The U.S. Armed Forces shipped over one million units of blood to Vietnam during 1964-1975, maintaining on hand at the peak of the war (1968-1969) a monthly average of about 30,000 units.
- In an effort to rid themselves of some predatory mercenaries to whom they had been forced to pay tribute, in 1354 the good people of Siena provided the "Great Company" with a "gift" of rations liberally seasoned with 35 pounds of poison, though unforutnately not a single one of the rowdy troops died as a result.
- Of 1,331 land engagements during the American Revolution, more took place in New Jersey than in any other state, 238 (17.8%), with New York a close second at 228 (17.0%).
- During the 1990-1919 Gulf War, about 95-percent of equipment and supplies for the Coalition forces arrived in the theater by sea.
- The first inkling the Carthaginian general Hannibal received that the Romans had defeated an army marching to his relief in 207 B.C. came in the form of his brother's head, thrown into his camp.
- About a third of all Serbians who served in World War I perished, as did a quarter of all Romanians, Turks, and Bulgarians, some 15-percent of Frenchmen, and about 12-percent of Britons.
- The "bearskin" caps worn by the Grenadier Guards are in some instances a century or more old, due partially to careful maintainence and partially to budgetary parsimony.
- Brooke Astor, the centenarian who has for decades been the grand dame of New York society and a noted patron of the arts and philanthropist, is the daughter of John Henry Russell, the 16th Commandant of the Marine Corps.
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