Infinite Wisdom

" . . . I leave two daughters -- Leuctra and Mantinea"

La Triviata

• On the eve of the First World War, the Royal Navy maintained a reserve of two battleship-caliber guns for every five in the fleet plus one set of gun mountings for every eight in the fleet, to permit quick replacement of damaged or destroyed equipment.
• When Quintus Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus (c. 210-c. 115 BC) was carried to his funeral, his bier was borne by a sitting praetor, and three former consuls, all of whom had, like him, celebrated triumphs, and one of whom was a former censor, all of whom were his sons.
• When the idea of invading the Crimea was first raised in the British government in 1854, Albert, the Prince Consort, ever a source of common sense, wrote a long memorandum to the Cabinet that opened by pointing out that, "The first difficulty is the absence of all information as to the Crimea itself."
• Among the names of men armed and trained for militia service on a list dated September 23, 1605 for the district of Barlickway, which included Stratford-on-Avon, is that of one "William Shakespeer."
• Between August and November of 1943, B-17s in the New Guinea area made high altitude attacks on at least 60 Japanese ships, expending a total of 825 bombs, to sink four vessels.
• The first tax protests in American history appear to have occurred during the Second Tidewater War, between Virginia and the Powhatan Indian Confederacy, when some colonists refused to contribute to the war effort, leading to heavy fines.
• Arminius, the Germanic chief who in A.D. 9 would betray the Romans and a devastating defeat on them in the Teutoburgerwald, was not only a veteran of the Imperial auxilia, but he was also a Roman citizen and member of the equestrian order.
• Although on the eve of Pearl Harbor the U.S. Navy had over 370,000 men -- and a few women -- in uniform, only slightly more than 4,000 of them were African-Americans, of whom just six were rated as something other than a cook, mess attendant, or steward.

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