Infinite Wisdom

"Gentlemen, don't fight the problem. Solve it."

La Triviata

• The Battle of Dettingen (June 27, 1743), was characterized by an almost unique tactical development, when, led by the 21^st Regiment of Foot (later the Royal Scots Fusiliers), British infantry attacked and routed a considerable force of French cavalry, a feat personally witnessed by King George II, as this was the last occasion on which a British sovereign actually commanded in the field.
• Although at the time considered an atrocity of the worst sort, during their month-long bombardment of Paris in December 1870-Janaury 1871, the Prussian-German forces fired 12,000 rounds into the city, damaging about 1,400 structures, but killing only 97 people.
• During the late eighteenth century, perquisites and opportunities for feathering one's nest in the Royal East India Company forces in India were such that a colonel could easily come away with £8,000 in a year above his official pay and emoluments, which only amounted to a few hundred pounds.
• By 1918, an average of 20,000 British troops were on leave in London every day.
• The backbone of the Maginot Line, in Alsace-Lorraine, took nine years to build from 1930 to 1939, at a cost of about fr 9 billion, then some $323 million, today about $5 billion based on the CPI, but probably more than twice that based on the prevailing minimum wage.
• During the Second World War, tiny Tristan da Cunha in the far South Atlantic, was officially a commissioned warship in the Royal Navy, designated HMS Atlantic Isle.
• The tallest classes of conscripts for the French Army during the nineteenth century were those of 1835-1839, many of whom had been born as a consequence of the occupation of France by Prussian, Russian, English, and other foreign troops from 1814 through 1818.
• During World War I Austro-Hungarian troops dubbed the wooden frames used to hold barbed wire in place “Spanishe Reiter – Spanish Riders”, after the famed Lipizzaner horses of the Spanish Riding School. 

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