On 30 April 1980 six Iranian Arabs seized the Iranian Embassy in the center of London and took 26 people hostage. They demanded the release of prisoners in Iran and safe passage out of the United Kingdom. British authorities managed to get five hostages released in return for minor concessions, but time passed, and tensions rose. On the sixth day, the hostage takers killed one of their captives. This killing triggered the British to launch an assault to rescue the remaining hostages. The roughly seventeen-minute assault was carried out by the British Army’s Special Air Service. Since all this took place in the center of London, the six-day siege and assault were viewed by the world. Ben MacIntyre tells the story in, “The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World”.

The A Shau Valley is in the mountainous northwest corner of what used to be South Vietnam. It is right across the border from Laos. Because of its location, the A Shau formed a natural hub for the North Vietnamese Army to move their units and supplies into South Vietnam and threaten the more heavily populated coastal plains. The United States tried multiple times and multiple ways to disrupt what the North Vietnamese were doing. Some of the Vietnam War's heaviest combat ensued. Jay Phillips tells the story in "A Shau: Crucible of the Vietnam War"

The island of Crete sits in the Eastern Mediterranean. In 1941 the Germans decided to seize Crete, “As a base for air warfare against Great Britain in the Eastern Mediterranean”. The elite paratroopers of Germany’s 7th Air Division were assigned to lead the attack. They would be reinforced by more troops arriving by sea and air. It was Germany’s biggest airborne operation of the war by far. The German attack started on May 20th, 1941. Approximately German 8,060 troops jumped into Crete or flew in by glider. Crete’s British, Australian, New Zealand, and Greek defenders knew the Germans were coming. Antony Beevor tells the story of what happened in “Crete 1941: The Battle and the Resistance”.