Nearly 150 years ago, a young Swiss man by the name of Henry Dunant, stumbled upon the horror of a battlefield in Solferino, Italy where as many as 40,000 soldiers lay dead or dying, with nobody to care for their wounds, or the sanitation problems that would soon follow. Dunant rallied locals to volunteer their time and what bandages they could muster, to clean wounds and feed the starving men.

On returning to his own country, Dunant publicly questioned why, in times of peace, it wasn't possible to organize volunteers who would go to areas of disasters like Solferino, and tend to the basic human needs of whoever required them, regardless of their country of origin. He had struck a spark that with four other men, would be fanned into the first flames of the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, founded in 1863. Not only would his efforts be the pre-cursor to the modern day International Red Cross, but they would also be instrumental in the development of the Geneva Convention.

They took as their symbol, a red cross on a white background, the reverse colors of the Swiss flag. In 1864, 12 countries signed the first Geneva Convention, guaranteeing the fair and humane treatment of all victims of war.

The movement spread, with each country opening their own branches of what would become the Red Cross Society, until today there are 181 member societies. Those include a variation on the name, because in non-Christian countries, the symbolic cross was exchanged for something less religiously oriented, and they became The Red Crescent Society.