In June 2011, the hallways of the district government center in rural Dand District, Afghanistan hummed with activity, with scores of local village elders visiting offices to appeal for assistance and handouts. Outside, insurgents had been pushed out...

In the fall of 1965, Army cadet Tom Carhart and five others at West Point Academy pulled off a feat of precision and ingenuity that made them famous: the theft of the Navy's Billy-Goat mascot from their rival academy, Annapolis, just before the bigge...