A businessman who stumbled on a battlefield's aftermath helped write the rules of war

In 1859, Swiss businessman Henry Dunant witnessed the carnage after the Battle of Solferino and was horrified that wounded soldiers were left to die with almost no care. His campaigning led to the founding of the Red Cross and the first Geneva Convention in 1864, establishing legal protections for the wounded, prisoners and civilians in war that still apply today.

— Henry Dunant, A Memory of Solferino — 1862; led to the Geneva Conventions of 1864 onward