Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan, February, 2006: Kindergarten students at Bob Hope Primary School on Kadena Air Base line up and prepare to race 100 feet as they celebrated the 100th day of school. Kindergarten classes at the school spent three hours going from one activity to another in which they learned the various ways to count to 100.

Frankfurt, Germany, September, 1947: Gen. Omar N. Bradley, left, head of the Veterans Administration, reviews the troops at Rhein-Main Air Base. Bradley’s whirlwind tour of the country whose World War II defeat he helped bring about (through his leadership of the Normandy invasion three years earlier) took him from the Frankfurt area to southern Bavaria.

Augsburg, West Germany, May, 1976: Muhammad Ali works his way through a crowd of admirers at Sheridan Barracks in Augsburg. The heavyweight boxing champ spent 10 hours at the base, but he had already made plenty of friends among the military community in Germany a few days earlier by buying 2,000 top-priced tickets to his fight at Munich against Richard Dunn (which he won) for U.S. service members.

Berlin, August, 1961: A little girl who was in West Berlin when the infamous Wall went up is led back into the Eastern sector by a Vopo, or East German policeman.

Stuttgart, Germany, July, 1962: A 7th Army crew lifts a Redstone missile into firing position during an exercise at Panzer Kaserne in Stuttgart. The 70-foot rocket — added to the USAREUR arsenal in 1958 — had a range of up to 200 miles, and was noted for its accuracy and dependability. A version of the Redstone was used to propel America’s first two astronauts, Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom, on their Mercury sub-orbital flights in 1961.

Lourdes, France, May, 1964: Pilgrims marching in a candlelight parade near the Rosary Church are seen in a time-exposure photo. Every year, thousands visit the grotto marking the spot where, in 1858, young Bernadette Soubirous said the Virgin Mary appeared to her. Miraculous cures have been attributed to the waters at the shrine’s spring.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, March 1997: Local workers put the finishing touches on the bridge between Celic and Gajevi as Russian and American soldiers stand guard. The U.S. Army’s 65th MP Company had been on patrol for more than two weeks amid continued violence against Muslim resettlers in the area.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, June 1998: Spc. Matt Popalisky of the 142nd Field Artillery National Guard from Fayetteville, Ark. reads a book at transient tent quarters on Eagle Base. Popalisky was marking time before heading back to the States in a few days.

Beli Dogle, Somalia, January 1993: President George H.W. Bush takes a question from one of the more than 100 U.S. soldiers and Marines who gathered to meet him at an air base in central Somalia. Bush, who stopped in the African nation on his way to a summit meeting with Boris Yeltsin in Russia, shared a meal of MRE field rations with the troops.

Baltic Sea, October, 1985: The USS Iowa fires its 16-inch guns during maneuvers in the Baltic Sea. The battleship drew large crowds of visitors during its stops in Scandinavian ports, and also attracted several Soviet and East German spy ships while in open water. Although U.S. officials wouldn’t openly characterize the exercise as a message to the Russians, Danish Defense Minister Hans Engell said it “lets them know that the Baltic Sea is not a Soviet lake.”