Infinite Wisdom

"Megalomaniacs are incapable of maintaining any coherent approach to allying themselves with other powers."

La Triviata

• When King George II  (1724-1760) of Britain and Hanover went to Germany in 1743 to take the field against the French, he required 662 horses for mounts and to pull the 13 carriages, 35 wagons, and 54 carts needed to transport his entourage of officials, aides, staff, and servants, plus all the furnishings and goodies necessary for him to “rough” it while on campaign.
• The USS Devilfish (SS-292) earned the dubious distinction of becoming the only submarine ever struck in a kamikaze attack when, on March 20, 1945, while attempting to submerge in Sagami Bay, southeast of Tokyo, she was lightly damaged, but made it back to Pearl Harbor and returned to sea within three months later.
• From 1789 to 1804 (roughly the period of its revolution and war for independence from France), Haiti’s population declined from about 600,000 to about 300,000, with a third of the deaths occurring from 1801 to 1804, during Napoleon’s disastrous effort to reconquer the country.
• For a time during the mid-nineteenth century, the British Army used the outline of a naked man for musketry practice, with the naughty bits obscured, causing the targets to be nicknamed “eunuchs”.
• Otto von Bismarck could read and write fluently in English, French, Italian, Latin, Russian, and, of course, his native German.
• Both Enver Hoxha (b. 1908), the communist strongman who ran Albania from the end of World War II until his death in 1985, and Anwar Sadat (b. 1918), President of Egypt from 1970 until his assassination in 1981, were named after Enver Pasha (1881-1922), who led “Young Turk” movement that took power in the Ottoman Empire in 1908, and who later played a prominent role in bringing the empire into World War I.
• During the Revolutionary War, the British seem to have been able to raise loyalist units in every colony except Delaware and Connecticut.
• Although Alexander the Great’s comrade and lover Hephaestion died in the autumn of 324 BC, his funeral was delayed until May of 323 BC to allow the collection of sufficient wood and luxury items needed to build and adorn a pyramidal 230-foot tall pyre for his cremation, at a cost of some10,000 to 12,000 silver talents, today perhaps $150 million.

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