Infinite Wisdom

"If only we could tell our fallen that the battle had been won."

La Triviata

• Among the dignitaries invited to the German Army maneuvers of 1909 was Winston S. Churchill, who attended in his uniform as a major in the Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars, a yeomanry regiment, and who was photographed shaking hands with Kaiser Wilhelm II.
• From mid-1944, the “battle rhythm” for a typical U.S. aircraft carrier was normally about three days of offensive operations followed by one or two days of replenishment.
• While helping to plan the Anglo-French expedition to the Crimea in 1853, general de division François Certain Canrobert reportedly met several times with Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini at the Café Anglais in Paris to discuss strategy.
• During World War I, casualties among lieutenants who were commissioned from West Point averaged 195 per thousand men engaged, as against 30.3 for officers commissioned by other means.
• In 1742, some 3,000 of the 6,620 seamen crewing the Royal Navy squadron in the Caribbean were incapacitated by disease.
• Between July 10 and October 31, 1940, during the Battle of Britain, RAF Fighter Command shot down 1,733 enemy aircraft, killing or capturing about 3,100 German aircrew in the process, while losing 915 of its own aircraft and about 500 fighter pilots killed in action, of whom nearly 400 were British, and the rest from the Commonwealth or other countries, notably Poland and Czechoslovakia.
• Fearing he did not have enough loot to parade while celebrating his defeat of the Dacians in AD 88-89, the Roman Emperor Domitian (AD 81-96) reportedly "borrowed" luxurious furnishings, art works, and other treasures from various imperial properties, including the palace.
• During World War I the people of Basutoland -- now Lesotho --  donated 24 aircraft to the fledgling RAF, which were presented to No. 72 Squadron, a feat the Basuto repeated in World War II, donating Spitfires for the same squadron, which still exists as a reserve component and bears the nickname “Basutoland”. 

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