Insightful World Cup Statistic Of The Day Dept

Well, it's not as though anybody ever accused the Italians of undue manliness...



I grew up in a part of the country that actually had its fair share of ethnic Italians, but the Italian-Americans who had fought under the Stars and Stripes in World War II didn't have a very high opinion of their Fascist cousins...for example, I remember hearing of the "latest Italian military technology." This was a brand-new high-performance, high-speed tank with a specialized five-speed transmission. "What makes it special," the vet telling the joke would say to us kids, "is that four of the gears are in reverse. And then of course they have one gear for going forward...in case the enemy manages to sneak around behind them..."