Princess Pingyang was the daughter of Emperor Gaozu of Tang, the founding emperor of the Tang Dynasty. She helped him seize power by organizing an army of women, which she commanded herself in her campaign to capture the Sui capital Chang'an.

Florence Nightingale came to prominence during the Crimean War, where she organized the tending to wounded soldiers. She gave nursing a highly favorable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture, especially in the persona of "The Lady with the Lamp" making rounds of wounded soldiers at night.

The Second Congo War began in August 1998 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a little more than a year after the First Congo War, and directly involved nine African countries. By 2008, the war and its aftermath had caused 5.4 million deaths, principally through disease and starvation, making it the deadliest conflict worldwide since World War II.

After the conquest of Asia Minor (546 BC) by Darius the Great left Ionian Greeks under Persian control, Persian authorities installed tyrants in most Ionian cities and forced the Greeks to pay taxes to their new rulers. In 499 BC, Aristagoras of Miletus instigated an Ionian Revolt and the Persian tyrants were thrown out. The resulting series of conflicts, which involved most of the Greek world pitted against the Persian Empire, came to be known as the Persian Wars.

The enormous Persian host met with no opposition until it reached the narrow pass of Thermopylæ where it found its way blocked by the confederate Greeks under the command of Leonidas, King of Sparta. For two days the assaults of the Persians were hurled back by the better-disciplined and better-armed Greeks; but on the third day, the betrayal of a path over the mountains exposed the defenders to be taken from behind. Finding that he was about to be surrounded, Leonidas dismissed his army, except his own contingent of three hundred Spartans whose national discipline required them to die at their post.

Adolf Hitler's nephew, William Patrick Hitler, served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

The Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910, ended dictatorship in Mexico and established a constitutional republic. A number of groups, led by revolutionaries including Francisco Madero, Pascual Orozco, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, participated in the long and costly conflict.

During World War II, civilians made up about 60% of the casualties. The high ratio of civilian casualties in this war was due in part to the increasing effectiveness and lethality of strategic weapons which were used to target enemy industrial or population centers, famines caused by economic disruption, and ethnic cleansing by the Axis Powers.

Alexander the Great spent most of his ruling years on an unprecedented military campaign through Asia and northeast Africa, and by the age of thirty he had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world, stretching from Greece to northwestern India.

Audie Murphy received every military combat award for valor available from the U.S. Army, including the Medal of Honor for single-handedly holding off an entire company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, then leading a successful counterattack while wounded and out of ammunition.