Infinite Wisdom

"Tell the men to fire fast and not give up the ship - fight her till she sinks."

La Triviata

• Genetic testing suggests that about one in twenty of the world’s male population are descended from Jengis Khan.



• Having stayed overnight at Moon’s Hotel in Godalming, Surrey, during his famous visit to England in 1698, Tsar Peter the Great and the 20 members of his entourage, breakfasted on half a sheep, a quarter of lamb, ten pullets, a dozen chickens, and 87 dozen eggs, plus six quarts of mulled wine and three of brandy!



• In 1919, Adm. William S. Sims, the U.S. Navy’s premier gunnery expert, predicted that aircraft carriers would eventually displace 20,000 tons, carry 100 aircraft and be able to make 35 knots, almost exactly describing the ships of the famed Yorktown Class, that began being built in 1934.



• Perhaps half of all the eligible noblemen of military age in France during the 1690s saw service as officers in the army.



• The Battle of the Thames, during the War of 1812, involved about 3,500 U.S. troops, of whom about 1-percent subsequently attained some measure of political distinction, 20 becoming members of the House of Representatives, four members of the Senate, three lieutenant governors, three governors, one vice-president, and one president, William Henry Harrison.



• His driver not arriving in time, one evening in 1934 the seniormost naval officer afloat, Adm. Joseph Mason Reeves, Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet, borrowed a Navy truck and drove himself, in full dress uniform – watch coat, braid, decorations, cocked hat with plumes, sash, sword, and so on – to a reception at the elegant Hotel Coronado, in San Diego.



• During World War II the distinguished Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen directed the technical design office of the OSS.



• It appears that the first Roman Catholic chaplain in the U.S. Navy was Charles H Parks, appointed in 1888, nearly a generation after the Army began appointing Catholic Chaplains.

More...