Infinite Wisdom

"War is the true life for a man."

La Triviata

• During the War of the French Revolution, Capt. Joseph Sidney Yorke, who commanded a series of frigates starting with HMS Circe, 28, when he was 22 in February of 1793, took part in the capture of at least 56 enemy vessels, mostly merchantmen, for which he was awarded prize of nearly £30,000, over 205 times the £146 the Royal Navy paid him each year.
• In 1872, early in the “Meiji Restoration,” the movement that began the modernization of Japan, the reformers resolved a financial crunch by the simple expedient of adopting the Gregorian calendar in place of the traditional East Asian lunar calendar, which required "skipping" two months in order to properly reconcile the two, thereby resulting in a significant financial savings.
• During Adolf Hitler's first trip to Rome to meet Benito Mussolini, in May of 1938, the Vatican City was closed to visitors, apparently as an expression of Pope Pius XI's contempt for the dictators.
• A report prepared in 1889 determined that 110 of the officers in the Regular Army, about 5 percent, had been promoted since 1869.
• It appears that in Antonine times (c. 130-193), a Roman soldier who committed some serious offense, might be punished by being transferred to the navy.
• Between 1940 and 1944 the British dropped 676 million propaganda leaflets over France.
• During the First World War, Britain recruited about 800,000 “native” troops, most of whom served in “secondary” theaters, while France recruited some 590,000, many of whom served on the Western Front.
• Only about 3.3 million of the approximately 5.7 million Soviet troops who were captured by the German armed forces during World War II survived the experience.

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