Infinite Wisdom

"My place is the place of danger, if I should be killed, you will be able to worry about your own future, and not mine."

La Triviata

• The details of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August of 1939 were so carefully concealed that when, later that year, Stalin attacked Finland with Hitler’s covert blessing, Mussolini promptly began shipping arms to the help the gallant Finns fight the Red Menace.
• Military regulations in Tang China (AD 618–907), prescribed death for medical personnel who abandoned or killed wounded soldiers.
• By the time the Royal Naval Air Service was merged into the Royal Air Force, on April 1, 1918, it had attained a strength of 55,000 personnel and 2,500 aircraft.
• St. Helena, the mother of Roman Emperor Constantine I “The Great” (r. 306-337), met his father, Flavius Valerius Constantius (r., 293-306) when he was still a junior officer and she was plying her trade as a barmaid.
• On December 12, 1899, when Winston Churchill escaped from a Boer prisoner-of-war camp, an order for his release had already been signed by Piet Joubert, Commandant-General of the South African Republic.
• The residence of the Prime Minister of Israel stands on land leased from the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem.
• Harald Sigurdsson, known as Hardrada (“the stern”), the Danish aspirant to the throne of England who fell at Stamford Bridge in 1066, wore a mail coat which for some reason he nicknamed “Emma”.
• Emerging victorious from the Battle of Conaghull (September 10, 1800), against the Indian princeling Doondiah Waugh, Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington), arranged for the maintenance and education of his slain foeman’s son.

More...