Infinite Wisdom

"Many thought that courage consisted of presenting themselves as a target. It is always necessary to point out that war is about killing and not about being killed."

La Triviata

• Of 5 million children born in Britain during World War II, more than a third were born out of wedlock.
• During his successful campaign against the Roman triumvir Marcus Licinius Crassus in 53 BC, which culminated in his decisive victory at Carrhae, the Parthian commander Surena was accompanied by his concubines, who reportedly required 200 carts for their transportation and accoutrements.
• Although there were a goodly number of international conflicts between Great Powers from the fall of Napoleon in 1815 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, only two involved more than two of the Great Powers: the Crimean War (1853-1856), in which France and Britain, plus some minor allies, fought Russia, and the Seven Weeks War (1866), in which Prussia and Italy took on Austria, each side with some smaller allies.
• During the Civil War, the site in Washington now occupied by the Native American Museum was quite popular with many senior politicians and officers, being the location of Madam Mary Ann Hall’s famous “parlor house”.
• As a teenager Tom Paine, later the fiery champion of American independence, considered signing on the privateer Terrible but, perhaps deterred by the fact that she was skippered by Capt. William Death, decided otherwise; which was probably good for the Republic, as on December 27, 1756, after a fierce battle with the French privateer Vengeance, Terrible was taken with the loss of 26 of her 150-man crew.
• During his visit to Rome in May of 1938, Adolph Hitler took in the Borghese Gallery and reportedly spent considerable time contemplating Antonio Canova’s famous nude of the sometime Princess Borghese, Napoleon’s younger sister Pauline Bonaparte.
• From March of 1917 through early 1920, the British government recruited the Chinese Labour Corps to perform labor service duties behind the fronts and in occupied territories, which reached a peak manpower strength of about 95,000 in August of 1918 (most of them in Flanders), some 4,000 of whom were killed in action while working near the front.
• Entering West Point in 1907, Terry de la Mesa Allen was later held back a year and then discharged for failing ordnance and gunnery, so he instead graduated from Catholic University in 1912, secured a commission in the cavalry, and in October of 1940 was promoted to brigadier general; the first member of his erstwhile academy class (1911) to wear stars.

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