Ancient World
to AD 500
to AD 500
In 480 BC, King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans made a legendary last stand against the Persian army at this narrow coastal pass.
What is Thermopylae?
This teenage peasant girl helped lift the English siege of Orléans in 1429 and was burned at the stake two years later.
Who is Joan of Arc?
Hernán Cortés led the Spanish conquest of this empire, whose island capital, Tenochtitlan, fell in 1521.
What is the Aztec Empire?
Napoleon met his final defeat at this battle in June 1815, in what is now Belgium.
What is the Waterloo?
Launched in 1906, this all-big-gun British battleship made earlier battleships obsolete and gave its name to a whole type of warship.
What is HMS Dreadnought?
German troops gave this nickname to the all-female Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment, which raided their lines in wood-and-fabric biplanes.
What are the Night Witches?
Put up in 1961, this barrier divided a German city until crowds breached it in November 1989.
What is the Berlin Wall?
In 49 BC, Julius Caesar defied the Roman Senate by leading a legion across this small river in northern Italy.
What is the Rubicon?
On St. Crispin’s Day in 1415, Henry V’s longbowmen helped crush a much larger French army at this battle.
What is Agincourt?
Philip II sent this great Spanish fleet against England in 1588, but English attacks and severe weather helped defeat the expedition.
What is the Spanish Armada?
The 1781 surrender of Lord Cornwallis at this Virginia port effectively ended major fighting in the American Revolution.
What is Yorktown?
Ulysses S. Grant’s 47-day siege of this Mississippi River city ended in its surrender on July 4, 1863.
What is Vicksburg?
To keep it secret, British workers were told this new WWI armored vehicle was a water carrier, which gave it its lasting name.
What is the tank?
The 1973 Arab–Israeli war began with a surprise Egyptian and Syrian attack on this holiest day of the Jewish year.
What is Yom Kippur?
In 216 BC, Hannibal encircled and destroyed a much larger Roman army at this battle, still taught as the textbook double envelopment.
What is Cannae?
The Byzantine Empire’s secret incendiary weapon kept burning even on water. Its exact recipe is still unknown.
What is Greek fire?
In 1683, a relief army led by Polish King Jan III Sobieski and his winged hussars broke the Ottoman siege of this capital.
What is Vienna?
Formerly enslaved in Saint-Domingue, this general became a leading figure in the Haitian Revolution before being deported to France in 1802.
Who is Toussaint Louverture?
The disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava in 1854 took place during this war against Russia.
What is the Crimean War?
At Gallipoli in 1915, this Ottoman officer won fame holding back the Allied landings. He went on to found the modern Republic of Turkey.
Who is Mustafa Kemal Atatürk?
Named for the lunar new year holiday, this January 1968 communist offensive shocked the American public.
What is the Tet Offensive?
In 480 BC, Greek warships defeated Xerxes’ fleet in the narrow straits beside this island near Athens.
What is Salamis?
After destroying the Crusader army at the Horns of Hattin, this sultan of Egypt and Syria retook Jerusalem in 1187.
Who is Saladin?
His victory at Sekigahara in 1600 helped this Japanese warlord secure power; he became shogun three years later.
Who is Tokugawa Ieyasu?
Commanding the Bonhomme Richard against HMS Serapis in 1779, this American naval officer reportedly declared “I have not yet begun to fight!”
Who is John Paul Jones?
Hours after the 1879 disaster at Isandlwana, about 150 British and colonial troops held this mission station against thousands of Zulus, earning 11 Victoria Crosses.
What is Rorke's Drift?
The code name for the 1940 evacuation of more than 330,000 Allied troops from the beaches of Dunkirk.
What is Operation Dynamo?
A Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 crushed this reform movement associated with Alexander Dubček.
What is the Prague Spring?
In 52 BC, Roman legions built two rings of siege walls, one facing in and one facing out, to trap Vercingetorix at this Gallic hill fort.
What is Alesia?
The 1420 Treaty of Troyes made Henry V heir to this French king, known as “the Mad,” whose daughter Catherine he married.
Who is Charles VI?
The Thirty Years’ War ended in 1648 with this group of treaties signed at Osnabrück and Münster.
What is the Peace of Westphalia?
In January 1781, Daniel Morgan’s double envelopment destroyed Banastre Tarleton’s force at this South Carolina battle.
What is Cowpens?
The Prussian-led victory at this French fortress town in September 1870 ended with the capture of Emperor Napoleon III himself.
What is Sedan?
Officially the Third Battle of Ypres, this 1917 offensive in Flanders became a byword for slaughter in seas of mud.
What is Passchendaele?
The 1954 fall of this French base in a remote valley to the Viet Minh effectively ended France’s war in Indochina.
What is Dien Bien Phu?
A Cherusci chieftain who had served Rome as an auxiliary officer, he lured three legions under Varus to their destruction in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9.
Who is Arminius?
Alexander Nevsky defeated the Teutonic Knights in 1242’s “Battle on the Ice,” fought on this frozen lake.
What is Lake Peipus?
Nicknamed the “Lion of the North,” this Swedish king was killed leading a cavalry charge at Lützen in 1632.
Who is Gustavus Adolphus?
This 72-year-old Prussian field marshal brought his army onto the field on the afternoon of June 18, 1815, helping Wellington defeat Napoleon.
Who is Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher?
This Ethiopian emperor routed an invading Italian army at Adwa in 1896, preserving his country’s independence.
Who is Menelik II?
Encircled by Hindenburg and Ludendorff at Tannenberg in August 1914, this commander of Russia’s Second Army shot himself rather than face the Tsar.
Who is Alexander Samsonov?
This NATO command exercise in November 1983 simulated nuclear escalation and prompted unusual Soviet military alert measures.
What is Able Archer 83?
After crushing the state of Zhao at Changping in 260 BC, this Qin general reportedly had some 400,000 surrendered soldiers buried alive.
Who is Bai Qi?
Nicknamed the “English Achilles,” this aging Earl of Shrewsbury was killed at Castillon in 1453, the Hundred years war’s last major battle.
Who is John Talbot?
In 1597, Admiral Yi Sun-sin used just 13 ships and a treacherous tidal channel to defeat a Japanese fleet of more than 130 warships at this battle.
What is Myeongnyang?
In September 1792, a French revolutionary army turned back the Prussians in an artillery duel at this battle, which Goethe said opened a new era in world history.
What is Valmy?
Hailed in the West as the “Nelson of the East,” this admiral annihilated Russia’s Baltic Fleet at Tsushima in 1905.
Who is Tōgō Heihachirō?
The largest offensive in the history of the Japanese army, this 1944 campaign in China aimed to overrun U.S. airbases and open a land route to French Indochina.
What is Operation Ichi-Go?
Somalia invaded Ethiopia in 1977 to seize the disputed region that gave this war its name.
What is the Ogaden War?