Infinite Wisdom

"The opponent must be crushed."

La Triviata

• During the American Revolution many of the black men who volunteered to serve in the British Army, were discharged in Sierra Leone, a colony for former slaves, which is why streets in Freetown bear the names of such noted British and Tory commanders as Lord Howe and Banastare Tarleton.


• Among those killed when the German UB-39 sank the Channel ferry Sussex on March 24, 1916, was the distinguished Spanish composer Enrique Granados and his wife.


• The six grandsons of Giuseppe Garibaldi, “The Sword of Italian Unity,” all fought in the First World War, during which two were killed in action, Bruno (24) and his brother Constanti (22) fighting in the Argonne in December of 1914 and January of 1915, while serving in the Italian Volunteer Regiment of the French Foreign Legion, commanded by another brother, Giuseppe Garibaldi.


• In 1943 a U.S. Army survey indicated that men assigned to combat duties were one-half inch shorter than the average height of all personnel in the service.


• Although the only European power lacking conscription, during the late nineteenth century perhaps a quarter of all adult British men had some military experience, whether from active service in the Royal Navy, the Army, or in the Militia, Yeomanry, and Volunteers, or in school and university military training corps.


• At the onset of the French Wars (1793-1815), the gold and silver bouillon reserves of the Bank of England stood at £2 million, a level from which, despite the ups and downs of nearly 25 years of global conflict, it never fell.


• Declaring that there was a “nobility of the mind” as well as one “of birth,” in March of 1890 Kaiser Wilhelm II declared that commoners were eligible for commissions in the German armed forces.


• Despite a reputation as a non-drinker, Hitler was not loath to serve champagne on celebratory occasions, such as the Fall of France or the capture of Crete, a custom which he maintained even during the dying days of the Reich in the Furherbunker, and he always preferred Moet et Chandon.

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