Infinite Wisdom

"I state but the facts when I say that we had a fairly warm time with those red men."

La Triviata

• During the late nineteenth century, the Royal Navy seriously considered the capture of Minorca, in the Balearic Islands for use as a forward base in the event of a war with France, a move which would surely have annoyed the Spanish.
• The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry, the most important military treatise produced in Europe during the later Middle Ages, was written by a woman, Christine de Pizan (1363-c. 1430), who had never served in arms or ever seen a battle, but had carefully studied ancient Roman history and contemporary military practice.
• As Sergei Prokofiev mounted the podium in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory on Jan. 13, 1945, to conduct the premiere of his Fifth Symphony, the silence was broken by the firing of hundreds of artillery pieces, celebrating the crossing of the Vistula by the Red Army.
• In 1861 Savannah’s “Oglethorpe Light Infantry,” commanded by Captain Francis Bartow (shortly to attain the dubious distinction of being the first Confederate brigade commander to be killed in action, at First Bull Run), became Company B of the 8th Georgia, was nicknamed “Bartow’s Beardless Boys,” often abbreviated to “BBB.”
• Because they are highly visible on clear nights, to prevent the Luftwaffe from using them as landmarks, the British camouflaged the scores of ancient chalk figures that are found on hillsides across their country, such as the Uffington White Horse and the Long Man of Wilmington.  
• Apparently the first Japanese Navy Staff College wargame of an attack on Pearl Harbor by aircraft carriers was held in 1927, and resulted in only moderate success, and one of the two flattops lost.
• During the Civil War, the Union raised the California Native Cavalry, three companies of Californios (i.e., Mexican-Californians) armed primarily with lances and a fourth with sabers and lariats, who served the Union in Arizona and New Mexico.
• At approximately 10:30 am on March 27, 1942, as Task Force 39 steamed through heavy seas in the North Atlantic to support the Royal Navy in European waters, Rear Adm. John W. Wilcox, Jr. was washed overboard from the stern of the battleship Washington (BB-56) and disappeared, apparently drowning in the ship’s wake or that of the following cruiser Tuscaloosa (CA-37).

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