Infinite Wisdom

"Is it better to risk the loss of the army and of Moscow by giving battle, or to abandon Moscow without a battle?"

La Triviata

• In August of 1918, the U.S. suggested that the Japanese send their four Kongo Class battlecruisers to help escort American troop convoys across the Atlantic, a proposal that was very politely turned down.
• Fray Nicholas Eymerich, a fourteenth century Dominican who composed the Directorium Inquisitorum, the first manual for interrogators, to help Inquisitors ferret out witches and heretics, noted that "torture is deceptive and ineffectual," as a method of reaching the truth, since people were likely to say anything to stop the pain.
• During their campaign to conquer Madagascar in 1895, the French lost 25 men to combat and about 6,000 to disease.
• Having risen to corporal of Bersgalieri during World War I, on April 2, 1938, Benito Mussolini was promoted to "Marshal of the Empire," a rank which he shared with King Victor Emanuel III.
• British archivists cataloged documents captured from the Third Reich at the end of World War II using a code beginning with the letters "PG," rumored to signify "Pinched from the Germans."
• Finding himself in a tight spot while campaigning against the Scythians in 513 BC, King Darius I of Persia retreated under cover of darkness, leaving behind his army’s many dogs and asses, which, by their barking and braying convinced the enemy that he was still in his camp.
• The armor provided Joan of Arc in 1429 cost 100 livres tournois, rather more than what a normal set would have cost for a high nobleman, apparently because some of the pieces had to be specially tailored to fit a 17 year old girl.
• During the Seven Years’ War, it seems likely that at some 45 percent of all recruits for the Royal Navy were actually "enlisted" involuntarily by the press gang.
• Inter-service relations between the French Army and the French Navy probably reached their nadir at a cabinet meeting during the final days of peace in 1914, when War Minister Adolphe Messimy attempted to strangle Minister of Marine Armand Gauthier de l'Aude.
• In early 1860, learning that Giuseppe Garibaldi was not-so-secretly organizing an expedition to liberate Sicily, Samuel Colt sent him 100 of his famous pistols.

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