Battles & Wars
435 items and 967 connections. Wars and battles from prehistory to today, with the commanders, the weapons and technology, and the arms makers and factories behind them. Labeled well documented, mostly agreed, debated or legend.
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Europe
Middle East & Africa
Zoom in to reveal more detail, out for the big picture · click a dot to open it · click a ◆ on a line for how two items connect · +N = hidden details · drag to move · tap an era at the top to jump to it.● event◆ battle■ person⬢ empire, kingdom or state◎ idea, religion or movement▲ invention or discovery▮ book, artwork, monument or document◉ arms maker, factory or program
Prehistory & first citiesbefore 3000 BC
Clubs, spears, bows and slings; the first massacres, walls and city wars.
Ancient world3000 – 500 BC
Chariots, bronze and the first recorded battles.
Greece, Rome & Han500 BC – AD 500
Phalanx and legion; Greece, Persia, Rome, Carthage and Han China.
Medieval wars500 – 1450
Knights, castles, Crusades and the Mongol storm.
Gunpowder empires1450 – 1750
Cannon and muskets; empires fight across oceans.
Revolutions & Napoleon1750 – 1850
Citizen armies, Napoleon and wars of independence.
Industrial wars1850 – 1914
Railways, rifles and the first modern wars.
World War I1914 – 1918
Trenches, machine guns and the war that broke empires.
Between the wars1918 – 1939
An uneasy peace, civil wars and the road to WWII.
World War II1939 – 1945
The deadliest war in history, on every continent and ocean.
Cold War1945 – 1991
Nuclear standoff and hot wars by proxy.
Modern conflicts1991 – today
Terror, insurgency, drones and the return of big wars.
Every item as its own page (435)
Prehistory & first cities
- Spear: the oldest weapon
- Bow and arrow
- Spear-thrower (atlatl)
- Prehistoric warfare: the first massacres
- Jebel Sahaba cemetery (Nile valley, Sudan)
- Nataruk massacre (Lake Turkana, Kenya)
- Wall and Tower of Neolithic Jericho
- Sling
- Club and mace
- First metalsmiths: copper smelting and bronze casting
- Talheim death pit (Germany)
- Destruction of Hamoukar: early evidence of a city siege
- Bronze weapons: the first metal arms
- Narmer and the unification of Egypt
Ancient world
- First recorded wars: Sumer's city-states and Elam
- Smiths and armorers: the first arms industry
- Lagash–Umma border war
- Shield and helmet
- Stele of the Vultures
- Sargon of Akkad and the first empire
- Composite bow
- War chariot
- The sword
- Ahmose I expels the Hyksos
- New Kingdom Egypt: the warrior pharaohs
- Thutmose III
- Battle of Megiddo
- Ramesses II
- Battle of Kadesh
- Egyptian–Hittite peace treaty
- Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea (according to the Bible)
- Tollense valley battle
- Wars of the Hebrew Bible
- Battle of Rephidim: Moses vs. Amalek (according to the Bible)
- Battle of Jericho: Joshua's conquest (according to the Bible)
- Iron weapons and the Iron Age
- Late Bronze Age collapse
- Trojan War
- Battle of the Delta: Ramesses III vs. the Sea Peoples
- David and Goliath (according to the Bible)
- Neo-Assyrian Empire
- Battering ram and siege tower
- Fort Shalmaneser: Assyria's royal arsenal at Nimrud
- Assyrian siege of Lachish
- Phalanx (hoplite and Macedonian)
- Fall of Nineveh
- Battle of Carchemish
- Signal fires and beacon towers
- Babylonian siege of Jerusalem
- Achaemenid Persian Empire
- Trireme and the ramming warship
Greece, Rome & Han
- Crossbow
- Sun Tzu's The Art of War
- Ancient ciphers (Spartan scytale, Caesar cipher)
- Greco-Persian Wars
- Battle of Marathon
- Leonidas I and the 300 Spartans
- Xerxes I of Persia
- Battle of Salamis
- Battle of Thermopylae
- Battle of Plataea
- Warring States and the Qin unification of China
- Peloponnesian War
- Catapult and ballista (torsion artillery)
- Roman legion
- Battle of Chaeronea
- Alexander the Great
- Battle of the Granicus
- Conquests of Alexander the Great
- Battle of Issus
- Siege of Tyre (332 BC)
- Battle of Gaugamela
- Battle of the Hydaspes
- Chainmail
- Wootz crucible steel and Damascus blades
- Punic Wars
- Battle of Changping
- Qin state arms workshops (the Terracotta Army's bronzes)
- Roman gladius
- Hannibal Barca
- Battle of Cannae
- Battle of Zama
- Gallic Wars
- Julius Caesar
- Battle of Carrhae
- Battle of Alesia
- Battle of Gergovia
- Vercingetorix
- Caesar's Civil War: the Rubicon and Pharsalus
- Battle of Actium
- Roman Empire
- Battle of the Teutoburg Forest
- Boudica's revolt
- First Jewish–Roman War: Jerusalem (AD 70) and Masada
- Battle of Red Cliffs
- Roman fabricae: the empire's state arms factories
- Hunnic Empire (Attila the Hun)
- Battle of Adrianople
Medieval wars
- Early Muslim conquests
- Battle of the Yarmouk
- Greek fire
- Stirrup and heavy cavalry (knights)
- Battle of Tours (Poitiers)
- Viking longship
- Battle of Talas
- Viking raids and conquests
- Gunpowder and cannon
- Castles and siege warfare
- Fire lance: the first gun
- Japanese sword (tachi and katana)
- Magnetic compass
- Battle of Hastings
- Battle of Manzikert
- The Crusades
- Siege of Jerusalem (1099)
- Venetian Arsenal
- Trebuchet (traction and counterweight)
- Saladin (Salah al-Din)
- Battle of Hattin
- Genghis Khan
- Mongol conquests
- Battle of Yehuling (Badger's Mouth)
- Subutai
- Siege of Zhongdu (Beijing)
- Mongol conquest of Khwarazm (Bukhara and Samarkand)
- Battle of the Indus
- Battle of the Kalka River
- Gunpowder rockets (Chinese fire arrows)
- Mongol invasion of Europe: Legnica and Mohi
- Siege of Baghdad (1258)
- Battle of Ain Jalut
- Mongol invasions of Japan
- English longbow
- Masamune, Japan's most famous swordsmith
- Hundred Years' War
- Battle of Crécy
- Timur (Tamerlane)
- Bombards: giant siege guns
- Battle of Kosovo (1389)
- Armorers of Milan and Nuremberg
- Plate armor
- Battle of Ankara
- Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg)
- Battle of Agincourt
- Joan of Arc
Gunpowder empires
- Mehmed II the Conqueror
- Orban and the Ottoman cannon foundries
- Fall of Constantinople
- Sengoku period (Japan's Warring States)
- The gun: arquebus and musket
- Toledo steel: Spain's sword-making city
- Smallpox and Old World epidemics in the Americas
- Hernán Cortés
- Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires
- Fall of Tenochtitlan
- First Battle of Panipat
- Galleons and ships of the line
- The military revolution (pike, shot and star forts)
- Battle of Lepanto
- Battle of Nagashino
- Defeat of the Spanish Armada
- Admiral Yi Sun-sin
- Battle of Hansan Island
- Imjin War (Japanese invasions of Korea)
- Korean turtle ship (geobukseon)
- Toyotomi Hideyoshi
- Battle of Myeongnyang
- Battle of Sekigahara
- American Indian Wars
- Thirty Years' War
- Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden
- English Civil Wars
- Peace of Westphalia
- Royal Arsenal, Woolwich
- Siege and Battle of Vienna (1683)
- Line infantry, flintlock and bayonet
- Battle of Blenheim
- Battle of Poltava
Revolutions & Napoleon
- Seven Years' War
- Battle of Plassey
- Marine chronometer (finding longitude)
- Field artillery and howitzers
- American Revolutionary War
- George Washington
- Submarine
- Battles of Saratoga
- Mysorean and Congreve rockets
- Siege of Yorktown
- Interchangeable parts and the American armory system
- Haitian Revolution
- French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
- Levée en masse (mass conscription)
- Optical telegraph (Chappe semaphore)
- Springfield Armory
- Napoleon Bonaparte
- Battle of the Nile
- Eli Whitney and the 1798 musket contract
- Horatio Nelson
- DuPont's Brandywine gunpowder mills
- Battle of Austerlitz
- Battle of Trafalgar
- Latin American wars of independence
- Battle of Borodino
- French invasion of Russia
- Battle of Leipzig (Battle of the Nations)
- Battle of Waterloo
- Clausewitz's On War
- Revolver (Colt)
- Electric telegraph and Morse code
- Opium Wars
- Breech-loading and bolt-action rifles
- Military railways
- Minié ball and the rifled musket
Industrial wars
- Railways, rifled muskets and the telegraph
- Taiping Rebellion
- Krupp of Essen (Alfred Krupp, the 'Cannon King')
- Crimean War
- Armstrong and Vickers: Britain's arms giants
- Colt's Hartford armory
- Ironclad warships (Gloire, USS Monitor)
- American Civil War
- Battle of Antietam
- Battle of Hampton Roads (Monitor vs. Virginia)
- Gatling gun
- Robert E. Lee
- Ulysses S. Grant
- Battle of Gettysburg
- Sherman's March to the Sea
- Alfred Nobel: dynamite, smokeless powder and Bofors
- Battle of Sedan
- Franco-Prussian War
- Schneider of Le Creusot
- Barbed wire
- Battle of the Little Bighorn
- Battle of Isandlwana
- Colonial conquest of Africa (Scramble for Africa)
- Machine gun (Maxim gun)
- First Sino-Japanese War
- Radio (wireless telegraphy)
- Battle of Adwa
- Battle of Omdurman
- Electric Boat (later General Dynamics)
- Second Boer War
- Russo-Japanese War
- Battle of Tsushima
- HMS Dreadnought and the naval arms race
- Warplanes (military aircraft)
- Lockheed (later Lockheed Martin)
World War I
- Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
- First Battle of the Marne
- Trench warfare
- World War I
- Armenian genocide
- Fighter aircraft
- Flamethrower
- Gallipoli campaign
- Hand grenade
- Poison gas
- Shell Crisis and Britain's Ministry of Munitions
- Strategic bomber
- U-boats and unrestricted submarine warfare
- Battle of Jutland
- Battle of the Somme
- Battle of Verdun
- Boeing
- Tank
- Russian Revolutions of 1917
- Sonar (ASDIC)
- Zimmermann Telegram (broken by Room 40)
- Hundred Days Offensive
Between the wars
- Aircraft carrier
- Enigma machine
- Russian Civil War
- Treaty of Versailles
- Air power and strategic bombing
- Douglas Aircraft (SBD Dauntless, C-47)
- Raytheon (radar magnetrons to the Patriot missile)
- Joseph Stalin
- IG Farben
- Chinese Civil War
- Mukden Incident and invasion of Manchuria
- Adolf Hitler
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Mao Zedong
- Messerschmitt (Bf 109, Me 262)
- Radar (and Britain's Chain Home)
- Spanish Civil War
- Supermarine Spitfire and its factories
- Bombing of Guernica
- Guerrilla and insurgent warfare
- Jet engine and the jet fighter (Me 262)
- Nanjing Massacre
- Second Sino-Japanese War
World War II
- Alan Turing
- Battle of the Atlantic
- Bletchley Park and Ultra codebreaking
- Blitzkrieg (combined-arms maneuver warfare)
- Georgy Zhukov
- German invasion of Poland
- Mitsubishi: the Zero fighter and battleship Musashi
- Northrop (later Northrop Grumman) and the B-2
- World War II
- Arsenal of Democracy: US war production
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
- Battle of Britain
- Cavity magnetron and the Tizard Mission
- Electronic warfare (jamming and chaff)
- Fall of France and the Dunkirk evacuation
- MIT Radiation Laboratory
- North American Aviation and the P-51 Mustang
- US codebreaking vs. Japan (Magic, Purple, JN-25)
- Winston Churchill
- Attack on Pearl Harbor
- Battle of Moscow
- Chrysler's Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant (M4 Sherman)
- Ford's Willow Run B-24 bomber plant
- Henry J. Kaiser and the Kaiser shipyards
- Higgins Industries and the landing craft
- Isoroku Yamamoto
- Lend-Lease
- Liberty ships
- Operation Barbarossa
- Siege of Leningrad
- Soviet factory evacuation and 'Tankograd'
- The Holocaust
- Albert Speer and German war production
- B-29 Superfortress program
- Battle of Midway
- Battle of Stalingrad
- Douglas MacArthur
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Grumman and the F6F Hellcat
- Guadalcanal campaign
- Manhattan Project
- Military helicopter
- Native American code talkers
- Oak Ridge (Clinton Engineer Works)
- Operation Uranus
- Proximity fuze
- Rosie the Riveter: women in war industry
- Second Battle of El Alamein
- Battle of Kursk
- Clarence 'Kelly' Johnson
- Hanford Site (plutonium production)
- Lockheed Skunk Works
- Los Alamos Laboratory
- Battle of Leyte Gulf
- Battle of the Bulge
- D-Day (Normandy landings)
- First electronic computers (Colossus, ENIAC)
- Omaha Beach
- V-1 and V-2: the first cruise and ballistic missiles
- Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- Battle of Berlin
- Battle of Iwo Jima
- Battle of Okinawa
- Night vision
Cold War
- AK-47 and the assault rifle
- Cold War
- 1948 Arab–Israeli War
- Arab–Israeli wars
- Kalashnikov's Izhevsk arms plant (Izhmash)
- RAND Corporation
- Nuclear weapons and deterrence
- Battle of Chosin Reservoir
- Battle of Incheon (Inchon landing)
- Korean War
- Hydrogen bomb
- Battle of Dien Bien Phu
- Nuclear and missile submarines (Nautilus, Polaris)
- Area 51 (Groom Lake) and secret 'black' aircraft programs
- U-2 spy plane
- Vietnam War
- Intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)
- Sputnik and the space race
- DARPA and the ARPANET
- Corona spy satellites
- Military-industrial complex (Eisenhower's 1961 warning)
- Cuban Missile Crisis
- SR-71 Blackbird
- Six-Day War
- Precision-guided munitions (smart bombs)
- Tet Offensive
- Yom Kippur War (October War)
- Fall of Saigon
- Stealth aircraft (F-117 Nighthawk)
- GPS (satellite navigation)
- Soviet–Afghan War
- China's arms makers: NORINCO and AVIC
- Iran–Iraq War
- Falklands War
- Tomahawk cruise missile
- B-2 Spirit stealth bomber
- Fall of the Berlin Wall
Modern conflicts
- Desert Storm air campaign
- Desert Storm ground war and the Battle of 73 Easting
- Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm)
- Norman Schwarzkopf
- Yugoslav Wars
- Battle of Mogadishu ('Black Hawk Down')
- The 'Last Supper' and the 1990s defense mergers
- Rwandan genocide
- Srebrenica massacre
- Kosovo War and NATO bombing
- Second Congo War
- Hanwha and South Korea's arms export boom
- Drones and precision strike
- September 11 attacks
- War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)
- War on Terror
- Iraq War
- Palantir Technologies
- Cyber warfare (Stuxnet)
- Killing of Osama bin Laden (Operation Neptune Spear)
- Syrian civil war
- Islamic State (ISIS) territorial 'caliphate'
- Russia–Ukraine war
- Russian annexation of Crimea
- Battle of Mosul (2016–2017)
- AI and data-driven warfare
- Anduril Industries
- Project Maven (Pentagon AI targeting)
- Hypersonic missiles
- Second Nagorno-Karabakh War
- Battle of Kyiv (2022)
- Iran's Shahed drones and Russia's Alabuga plant
- Rheinmetall and Europe's rearmament
- SpaceX and Starlink in Ukraine
- Ukraine's wartime drone industry
- Israel–Hamas war
- Operation Midnight Hammer (US strikes on Iran's nuclear sites)
- Twelve-Day War (Israel and the US vs. Iran)
- US strikes on alleged drug boats (Operation Southern Spear)
- 2026 US–Israel war with Iran
- US capture of Nicolás Maduro (Operation Absolute Resolve)