Infinite Wisdom

"The thing you have to understand about cavalry is that most of the brains is in the horse."

La Triviata

• When Admiral Lord Vernon captured Chagres, Panama, on March 24, 1741, prize awards were so great ordinary boatswains’ mates came away with £65 each, easily more than $10,000 in money of 2009.
• Until May 1, 1942, Japanese Imperial Navy losses in the Pacific War amounted to only 23 warships, the largest of which was a destroyer, for a total of 26,400 tons, but over the next six weeks losses would increase by over 180,000 tons, in the form of five aircraft carriers, a seaplane carrier, a heavy cruiser, three destroyers, two submarines, and several fleet auxiliaries and smaller warships, mostly during the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway.
• Through his mother, the former Jennie Jerome of Brooklyn, Winston Churchill was not only half-American, but also 1/64^th Seneca.
• Based on surviving paperwork – morning reports, pay records, duty rosters, letters, etc. – it appears that around A.D. 150 at least a third of Roman soldiers were literate.
• Training to fight the Indians in 1792-1793, “Mad” Anthony Wayne’s “Legion of the United States” fired 162,056 musket rounds, an average of about 50 per man, an unusually high allocation for the times.
• While preaching the Gospel among the Masai, a missionary was asked by one of the warriors, “I want to learn more about this great person Jesus Christ. I have three questions about him: First, did he ever kill a lion? Second, how many cows did he own? Third, how many wives and children did he have?”
• It required the personal intervention of President Lincoln before militiamen serving in Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg Campaign could be issued uniforms, because Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton believed that the emergency would be over before the troops wore out their own clothes, and thus a considerable savings could be realized.
• Christian chroniclers of the Moslem siege of Valencia in 1101 reported that the attacking army included some 300 black female warriors, mistaking veiled Tuareg bowmen for women.

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