Al Nofi's CIC
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Issue #183, January 28th, 2008 |
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This Issue...
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Infinite Wisdom
"There have been many generals who have used the pen to explain their success (or failure) with the sword."
La Triviata
- In 1812, champagne producer Charles-Henri Heidsieck rode 2,000 miles from Reims to Moscow, to personally deliver several bottles of fine bubbly to Napoleon, so that the Emperor could celebrate the conquest of Russia in proper style.
- Fears that light reflecting off the gilded dome of the Massachusetts State House, in Boston, might provide German u-boats a navigational aid led to it being painted gray, which was not removed until 1948.
- In 1928, when the authorized enlisted strength of the Regular Army was barely 119,000 men, with perhaps that many more again available in the National Guard, the Army committed itself to having a 90,000-strong expeditionary force ready to sail from the West Coast in the event of war with Japan on the first day of mobilization.
- Don Juan Jose Marcilla de Teruel Moctezuma y Jimenez, who since 1991 has been the Duke of Moctezuma de Tultengo and a Grande of Spain, descends in about the 16th generation from an illegitimate son of the Aztec Emperor Motechuzoma II Xocoyotzin.
- In addition to being awarded many military honors during his visit to the United States in the autumn of 1921, French Marshal Ferdinand Foch was adopted into the Crow nation by Chief Plenty Coups, who had scouted for the Army during the Plains Indian Wars.
- During the Peninsular War (1808-1814), British intelligence had an agent who was a shoemaker in Irun, on the Franco-Spanish border, which permitted him to gather information from French troops as he repaired their footwear.
- When Kaiser Wilhelm II went into exile shortly before the Armistice of November 11, 1918, he did so in his full uniform as the “Supreme Warlord of the German Empire,” which delayed his entry into The Netherlands, because he was reluctant to surrender his sword to the Dutch border guards.
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Portions of "Al
Nofi's CIC" have appeared previously in Military Chronicles,
Copyright © 2005 Military
Chronicles (www.militarychronicles.com), used with permission, all rights
reserved.
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