When the British Army went ashore at Normandy, private Bill Millin was wearing a Cameron tartan kilt and playing “Hielan’ Laddie” on his bagpipes. Unarmed except for a ceremonial dagger, he marched up and down the water’s edge, blasting out tunes, and miraculously was not hit. Millin was personal piper to Lord Lovat, commander of 1st Special Service Brigade. The War Office had banned pipers from leading soldiers into battle after many were lost in World War I. “But that’s the English War Office,” Lovat told him. “You and I are both Scottish, and that doesn’t apply.”

“Mad Jack” Churchill enjoyed danger so much that he fought World War II with arrows and a broadsword — that’s him on the far right below, leading a training exercise in Scotland.

“Any officer who goes into action without his sword,” he said, “is improperly dressed.”

Churchill charged through the whole war this way — he’s the only British soldier to fell an enemy with a longbow — and yet he lived to be 90. He died peacefully in Surrey in 1996.

William Howard Taft weighed as much as 340 pounds during his presidency, but after leaving office he lost 70 pounds and kept it off for the remainder of his life. He shared his diet on the front page of the New York Times:

“I have dropped potatoes entirely from my bill of fare, and also bread in all forms. Pork is also tabooed, as well as other meats in which there is a large percentage of fat. All vegetables except potatoes are permitted, and of meats, that of all fowls is permitted. In the fish line I abstain from salmon and bluefish, which are the fat members of the fish family. I am also careful not to drink more than two glasses of water at each meal. I abstain from wines and liquors of all kinds, as well as tobacco in every form.”

“I can truthfully say that I never felt any younger in all my life,” he said. “Too much flesh is bad for any man.”

In 1864, as Abraham Lincoln fought for re-election during the Civil War, he was eager to admit Nevada to the Union because of its pro-Unionist and largely Republican sympathies. James Nye, governor of the territory, sent certified copies of the Nevada constitution overland to Washington, but on Oct. 24 they still hadn’t arrived. So he sent the entire constitution by telegram.

Telegrapher James H. Guild worked for seven hours to transmit the document in Morse code. Because there was no direct link from Carson City to Washington, he had to send it to Salt Lake City, from which it bounced to Chicago, then Philadelphia, and finally the War Department’s telegraph office at the capital. Above is the final page of the 175-page transcription, showing the word count (16,543) and the cost ($4,303.27, about $60,000 today).

Three days later, just eight days before the election, Nevada was admitted to the Union, and Lincoln was re-elected president.