Infinite Wisdom

"Three of the most dangerous words in the English Language are ‘History teaches us . . . .' There usually follows some overly simple pretension that has no relation to truth."

La Triviata

• For his entombment in St. Paul’s Cathedral on November 18, 1852, the body of the Duke of Wellington was transported from the Royal Military Hospital at Chelsea on an elaborately decorated funeral cart that weighed 18 tons.
• Of 541 Navy and Marine Corps aircraft lost in combat during the Korean War, only four were lost in air-to-air fighting with enemy aircraft, the other 537 being downed by ground fire.
• During World War II the Spanish Ambassador to Britain was the Duke of Alba, Jacobo Maria del Pilar Carlos Manuel Fitz-James Stuart, a direct descendant of the deposed Stuart kings of England, though via an illegitimate line.
• In 1855, during the planning for the Anglo-French invasion of the Crimea, Empress Eugénie of France is reported to have consulted her husband’s late uncle, the real Napoleon, for guidance, through the use of a Ouija board.
• Of 311 Jewish chaplains in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II (two-thirds of whom served in the Army, the rest in the Navy), 68 were Orthodox, 147 Reform, and 96 Conservative. 
• In 1879 the Pennsylvania state militia was reorganized to form a division, which, known since 1917 as the “28th Infantry Division”, is the oldest division in continuous service in the United States Army.
• At one point in 1944 Marshal of the Soviet Union Semyon Budyenny, the Inspector General of Cavalry for the Red Army, threw a party at a winery in Bessarabia, during which he ended up cavorting with a bevy of women in a vat of wine.
• It was not until 1868 that the Austrian Army abolished the right of colonels to “own” their regiments, which had brought them some financial benefits in the form of commissions on sums expended to secure arms, equipment, and other items. 

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