"Though all under heaven be a peace, if the arts of war be forgotten there is peril."
- During the “French Wars” (1793-1815), the Royal Navy had in commission at one time or another some 420 frigates, commanded. at one time or another, by 670 captains.
- As a young man, Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgi K. Zhukov, who led the Red Army into Berlin in 1945, had hopes of becoming a furrier
- According to legend, in order to convince his enemy – the redoubtable Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden – that he had more cavalry than was actually the case, at one point during the Battle of Leutzen, Count Wallenstein, one of the most notable commanders of the day and a military entrepeneur without parallel, mounted some “camp followers” on baggages horses and mules and positioned them where they could be seen by the enemy.
- The biggest “field” of veterans vying for the pesidency was six, in 1880, when Col. Benjamin Harrison defeated Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, Brig. Gen. John W. Phelps, Brig. Gen. Neal Down, and Col. James B. Weaver
- During the Mexican War pioneering American aeronaut John Wise proposed capturing the Fortress of San Juan Ulloa, guarding the port of Vera Cruz, by dropping 18,000 pounds of explosives on the place from a large balloon.
- Sigmund Freud, noted as the later founder of psychoanalysis, did a tour of duty in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the 1880s, rising to surgeon lieutenant.
- It appears that P.D. Lochridge, USMA 1887, who attained a brigadier generalcy during World War I as head of the Army War Plans Division, never had a given or middle name; all documentary references bear only the initials “P.D.,” and that is what everyone used when speaking with him.
- In 1846, on the eve of war with the U.S., the Mexican Army had 624 cannon and 685 mortars but only 1,840 artillerymen, a ratio of 1.4 gunners for each piece of artillery, though since only 140 of the pieces were serviceable this was not really a major problem.