As 4500 tonnes of explosives fell from 800 British planes, 25,000 Dresdeners died in a raging firestorm and the heart of their historic city was obliterated.

66: Sheep farmer Percy Overton was 37 when he sailed for war in October 1914.

"Urgent. Soldiers of the Islamic State captured 21 Christian crusaders," was a barely noticed statement issued on social media last month by Isis - not in Syria, Iraq, but in Libya.

One hundred years ago today, a skinny young labourer from Ngatimoti died on a dusty field on the other side of the world.

65: Evan Hudson's family made sure he would not be forgotten.

One hundred years after a Tauranga mill-hand was cut down by machine-gun fire high on Gallipoli Peninsula, his war medals have been reunited with his descendants.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond says New Zealand is regarded as family and he hopes it will become actively involved in the fight against the Islamic State.

63: Inscribed on one of the bells in the National War Memorial is a tribute to Leslie Heron Beauchamp.

A 46-year-old Ukrainian tank commander says politicians might yet stop the conflict that grips the east of his country, but supplies of arms from the West would bring a quicker result.

62: William Clachan was made of tough stuff. The Wellington schoolteacher was wounded three times on the Western Front.

61: Today we might call them special forces. When Robert Kenneth Nicol joined a top secret British Army unit in 1918, it was known as the "hush-hush brigade".

A lost documentary Alfred Hitchcock made about the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps during World War Two has finally reached screens thanks to movie mogul Brett Ratner.

60: At the outbreak of World War I, Victor Spencer joined queues of young volunteers eager to fight for king and country.

Few major institutions in Auckland's history devoted 82 per cent of their staff to a war.

Seventy years ago today, a German submarine went on an unsuccessful search for ships to sink in New Zealand waters.

58: He was a dashing English gent of Maori descent with a daring need for speed, who became the first airman to win a Victoria Cross in World War I.

The war is officially over, victory secured. And Afghanistan, once again, has been rebuilt. But for many, life in the restive provinces is much as it ever was.

Anton Tumanov gave up his life for his country, but his country won't say where and it won't say how.

There is a scene in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass in which Alice meets the White Knight who is wearing full armour and riding a horse which he keeps falling off.

The father of a Jordanian pilot captured by Isis after his plane crashed pleaded for his son's release, as reports emerged that the jihadists were preparing to publicly execute him.

Captured Yazidi girls in Iraq are killing themselves to escape rape and torture at the hands of Isis (Islamic State) militants holding them prisoner.

A veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion, he fought alongside Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, and has a treasure trove of anecdotes...

One Christmas story above all deserves a run this year: the sound of Silent Night from the trenches in the first Christmas of the Great War.

A 93-year-old German man Oskar Groening, who claims he was an accountant at Auschwitz, to go on trial for being an accessory to the murder of 300,000 prisoners.

A 15-year-old was prevented from joining Isis by British police who hauled her off a plane at Heathrow just as it was due to take off.

55: For five anxious years the troopships set sail from New Zealand, carrying her men in uniform away to war.

54: Nothing seemed to frighten Dick Travis. His turf was No Man's Land, the zone of death between enemy trenches and his regiment's frontlines.