Did You Know

DID YOU KNOW?

By Bruno Just & Thoran Braune

1) That medieval stone-throwing engines were similar to Greco-Roman engines because they were copied from the Byzantines and from ancient Roman military texts such as that by Vegetius.[1]








2) That General Giulio Douhet of Italy advocated strategic bombing and predicted that “…the involvement of all people in the war of the future due to extensive aerial bombardment.”[2]

3) That Big Hole, Wisdom, Montana is the site of a clash between US Colonel John Gibbon’s force and the Nez Perce of Chief Joseph in August 1877.[3]





4) In 1598 Juan de Onate, founded a colony in the Rio Grande valley. A year later his soldiers began attacking the local Indians. In one such raid in 1599 the Spanish attacked the Acoma Pueblo of the Keres, killing about 800 and capturing another 600 to be used as slaves. Juan de Onate ordered all captured males, from this raid, over the age of 25 to have one foot cut off and to serve 20 years in slavery.[4]


5) The Apaches, who were allies of the Keres and help to defend Acoma against the 1599 attack, raided San Gabriel so much (also as did the Navajo) that Juan de Onate had to move his capital to Santa Fe in 1610.[5]


6) That the Boer commandos were organized on the basis of peacetime administrative districts and according to the size of the Afrikaner population. The Commandant was elected by the burghers within the commando. At the start of the Anglo-Boer War these commandos averaged 1,000 men each, with some as small as 200 and others as large as 3,000.[6]

George Orwell

7) War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory
     George Orwell (1903 - 1950), Polemic, May 1946, "Second Thoughts on James Burnham"

Homer

8) You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
     Homer (800 BC - 700 BC), The Iliad

Albert Einstein

9) You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
     Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Douglas Adams

10) He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.

Douglas Adams  English humorist & science fiction novelist (1952 - 2001)


11) Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)

Lord Acton

12) The man who prefers his country before any other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the state. They both deny that right is superior to authority.

Lord Acton


13) Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
      Lord Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887

Scott Adams

14) If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?

Scott Adams US cartoonist (1957 - )

Aeschylu

15) In war, truth is the first casualty.
      Aeschylus Greek tragic dramatist (525BC - 456BC)


16) It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.
      Aesop Greek slave & fable author (620BC - 560 BC)

Add caption

17) I took a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
      Woody Allen US movie actor, comedian, & director

Abraham Lincoln

18) Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.
      Abraham Lincoln 16th president of US (1809 - 1865)


19) There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.
       Lois McMaster Bujold, US science fiction author (1986)


20) When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'
       Don Marquis (aka Donald Robert Perry) US humorist (1878 - 1937)


21) Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the  strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

Sir Winston Churchill British politician (1874 - 1965)


22) Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it.
      Edna St. Vincent Millay, Letters US poet (1892 - 1950)


23) Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
      Laurence J. Peter US educator & writer (1919 - 1988)


24) In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular.
      Laurence J. Peter US educator & writer (1919 - 1988)

Footnotes

[1] Canby, Courtland. A History of Weaponry, Hawthorne Books, New York, 1965, p.19.

[2] Ibid. p.87.

[3] Hook, Jason, To Live and Die in The West, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, 1999. P.53.

[4] Ibid. p.132.

[5] Opcit. p.132.

[6] Knight, Ian, Colenso 1899, Osprey, Reed Consumer Books, Melbourne, 1995. p.14. QUOTES