The world of high-stakes international diplomacy can be rough and tumble, but it's more often than not a procession of suits and summits, protocol sessions and photo ops.

With the newspapers cheering, Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt chose a top-notch regiment of more than 1,250 men. They were first called Teddy's Texas Tarantulas and went through three or four other monikers until Roosevelt's Rough Riders stuck.

Knievel seemed braver and more brazen - and more unhinged - than any other athlete-cum-thrill-seeker of his era.

The Rough Riders brought honor to San Antonio by winning battles in Cuba throughout the summer of 1898, and Roosevelt became a Texas folk hero overnight.

Richard Kerry not only was a pilot in World War II, but was a civil servant. He did not come from money.

The D-Day moniker wasn't invented for the Allied invasion. The same name had been attached to the date of every planned offensive of World War II. It was first coined during World War I, at the U.S. attack at the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, in France in 1918.