Infinite Wisdom

"We must consult our means, rather than our wishes and not endeavor to better our affairs by attempting things which for want of success may make them worse."

La Triviata

• Between 1914 and 1924 Germany awarded some 5.9 million Iron Crosses, or approximately one for every 2.2 Germans who had served in the Great War, though some men earned more than one, such as Gefreiter Adolf Hitler, who received two.
• In 1943 the Masai, one of Africa’s great warrior peoples, donated 17,926 head of cattle to the British war effort from their national herds.
• For most of the first decade of the twentieth century, the desertion rate in the U.S. Navy ran about 15 percent of enlisted personnel per year, on top of an annual discharge rate of about 25 percent.
• During World War II, Canada sent 1.5 million men and women into uniform out of a population of some 12 million.
• The highest ranking Jewish official in Roman history was Tiberius Julius Alexander (fl. c. A.D. 30-80), who served as Praetorian Prefect, commander of the Praetorian Guard and effective administrative head of the Roman Army, for part of Vespasian's reign (A.D. 69-79), he having been an enthusiastic supporter of the latter's candidacy for the Imperium during the "Year of the Four Emperors".
• Otto von Bismarck's sons Herbert and Wilhelm were both wounded-in-action at the Battle of Mars-la-Tour (Aug. 16, 1870), during the Franco-Prussian War, which their father had brought about.
• On October 29, 1800, Frederick Augustus, the Duke of York and Albany, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, issued regulations limiting the number of women permitted to accompany the troops, by tradition to serve as laundresses, nurses, and cooks, to six per hundred men, inclusive of the wives of NCOs.
• During the Spanish-American War the price Army Quartermasters paid for mules increased on average from $122 to $145 per animal, or roughly $0.21 a day for every day from the U.S. declaration of war on April 25^th until the armistice of August 13^th.

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