How a Drunken Sailor Captured a Fort

     The British Empire, it is said, was won in a moment of absent mindedness. Certainly, it wasn't planned. On the coasts of India, for instance, the European powers were permitted to establish trading posts, to the mutual benefit of both sides. In 1690 a doctor of the English East India Company saved the life of a daughter of the Mogul Emperor, as a reward for which the Company was allowed to set up shop at Calcutta. Alas! The oppressions of the fanatical Emperor Aurangzeb against his Hindu subjects meant that the Empire quickly began to tear itself apart with multiple rebellions and invasions. By 1756 Bengal was in the hands of an upstart ruler who wanted the Company out. The result was a battle notable for the extreme courage of the British soldiers and the extreme cowardice of their leaders, and which ended in the notorious Black Hole of Calcutta. It was clear to the Company that if they were to have any future in India they were going to have to fight. And their numbers were pitifully small against those pitted against them.

You DON'T Know What You're Standing in Line For?

     A writer who had lived many years in Hong Kong claimed that Asians in general, and Chinese in particular, do not queue. They will push up to the counter; they will take you taxi if you're not quick enough. Queuing, she said, is for affluent societies whose citizens know that there will always be enough merchandise, taxis, or tickets to go around. She obviously hadn't lived in Mao's China, where acute shortages, combined with strict rationing, produced the same sort of interminable human lines for which the old Soviet Union was notorious. There is nothing like manmade disasters, such as wars or Communism, to make people stand in line.