Frederick Ross

“(Hitler would still have Frederick the Great on his wall in the Berlin bunker at the moment of his demise in 1945).””

“Mighty men of science and mighty deeds. A Newton who binds the universe together in uniform law; Lagrange, Laplace, Leibnitz with their wondrous mathematical harmonies; Coulomb measuring our electricity... Faraday, Ohm, Ampère, Joule, Maxwell, Hertz, Röntgen; and in another branch of science, Cavendish, Davy, Dalton, Dewar; and in another, Darwin, Mendel, Pasteur, Lister, Sir Ronald Ross. All these and many others, and some whose names have no memorial, form a great host of heroes, an army of soldiers – fit companions of those of whom the poets have sung... There is the great Newton at the head of this list comparing himself to a child playing on the seashore gathering pebbles, whilst he could see with prophetic vision the immense ocean of truth yet unexplored before him...””

“Frederick William also banned French, the official language of his father’s court, and when he drank heavily - which was often - he toasted perdition to “the damned French,” whom he called a “bunch of rabble.” He despised the French so much that to persuade his people not to follow their fashions, he had convicted criminals dressed in French costumes before they were hanged.””