ANNIVERSARIES

29 OCTOBER 1863

The Red Cross is founded

A new organisation aims tohelp wounded soldiers

Henry Dunant was a man on a mission. The Swiss businessman had come to northern Italy in the summer of 1859 keen to buttonhole the French emperor Napoleon III about water rights for his company in north Africa. When he arrived, though, Dunant found himself a witness to the carnage of the battle of Solferino – a bloody clash that pitted France and Sardinia against their mutual enemy Austria. Almost 30,000 men were killed or wounded, and the horror stayed with Dunant forever.

For the next four years he travelled around Europe, describing what he’d seen and arguing that wounded soldiers deserved better care. The ideal thing, Dunant said, would