Toyotomi Hideyoshi was a preeminent daimyō, general and politician of the Sengoku period, regarded as Japan's second "great unifier". He succeeded his former liege lord, Oda Nobunaga, brought an end to the Sengoku period; the period of his rule is called the Momoyama period, named after Hideyoshi's castle. After his death, his young son Hideyori was displaced by Tokugawa Ieyasu. Hideyoshi left an influential and lasting legacy, including the restriction on the possession of weapons by the samurai, the construction and restoration of many temples, some of which are still visible in Kyoto, the Japanese invasions of Korea. Little is known for certain about Hideyoshi before 1570 when he begins to appear in surviving documents and letters, his autobiography starts in 1577, but in it, Hideyoshi spoke little about his past. According to tradition, he was born in the home of the Oda clan, he was born of no traceable samurai lineage. He had no surname, his childhood given name was Hiyoshi-maru although variations exist.

Yaemon died in 1543, when Hideyoshi was 7, the younger of two children, his sibling being an older sister. Many legends describe Hideyoshi being sent to study at a temple as a young man, but he rejected temple life and went in search of adventure. Under the name Kinoshita Tōkichirō, he first joined the Imagawa clan as a servant to a local ruler named Matsushita Yukitsuna, he traveled all the way to the lands of Imagawa Yoshimoto, daimyō of Suruga Province, served there for a time, only to abscond with a sum of money entrusted to him by Matsushita Yukitsuna. In 1558, he joined the Oda clan, now headed by Oda Nobunaga, as an ashigaru, he became one of Nobunaga's sandal-bearers and was present at the Battle of Okehazama in 1560 when Nobunaga defeated Imagawa Yoshimoto to become one of the most powerful warlords in the Sengoku period. According to his biographers, he supervised the repair of Kiyosu Castle, a claim described as "apocryphal", managed the kitchen. In 1561, Hideyoshi married One, Asano Nagakatsu's adopted daughter.

He carried out repairs on Sunomata Castle with his younger brother Toyotomi Hidenaga and Hachisuka Masakatsu and Maeno Nagayasu. Hideyoshi's efforts were well received, he constructed a fort in Sunomata, according to legend overnight, discovered a secret route into Mount Inaba after which much of the garrison surrendered. Hideyoshi was successful as a negotiator. In 1564, he managed to convince with liberal bribes, a number of Mino warlords to desert the Saitō clan. Hideyoshi approached many Saitō clan samurai and convinced them to submit to Nobunaga, including the Saitō clan's strategist, Takenaka Shigeharu. Nobunaga's easy victory at Inabayama Castle in 1567 was due to Hideyoshi's efforts, despite his peasant origins, Hideyoshi became one of Nobunaga's most distinguished generals taking the name Hashiba Hideyoshi; the new surname included two characters, one each from Oda's two other right-hand men, Niwa Nagahide and Shibata Katsuie. Hideyoshi led troops in the Battle of Anegawa in 1570 in which Oda Nobunaga allied with Tokugawa Ieyasu to lay siege to two fortresses of the Azai and Asakura clans.

He participated in the 1573 Siege of Nagashima. In 1573, after victorious campaigns against the Azai and Asakura, Nobunaga appointed Hideyoshi daimyō of three districts in the northern part of Ōmi Province. Based at the former Azai headquarters in Odani, Hideyoshi moved to Kunitomo and renamed the city Nagahama in tribute to Nobunaga. Hideyoshi moved to the port at Imahama on Lake Biwa. From there he began work on Imahama Castle and took control of the nearby Kunitomo firearms factory, established some years by the Azai and Asakura. Under Hideyoshi's administration, the factory's output of firearms increased dramatically, he fought in the Battle of Nagashino. Nobunaga sent Hideyoshi to Himeji Castle to conquer the Chūgoku region from the Mori clan in 1576, he fought in the 1577 Battle of Tedorigawa, the Siege of Miki, the Siege of Itami, the 1582 Siege of Takamatsu. After the assassinations at Honnō-ji of Oda Nobunaga and his eldest son Nobutada in 1582 at the hands of Akechi Mitsuhide, seeking vengeance for the death of his beloved lord, made peace with the Mōri clan and defeated Akechi at the Battle of Yamazaki.

Subsequently, Hideyoshi was in a strong position. He summoned the powerful daimyo to Kiyosu. Oda Nobukatsu and Oda Nobutaka quarreled, causing Hideyoshi to instead choose Samboshi, Nobunaga's grandson. Having won the support of the other two Oda elders, Niwa Nagahide and Ikeda Tsuneoki, Hideyoshi established Hidenobu's position, as well as his own influence in the Oda clan, he distributed Nobunaga's provinces among the generals and formed a council of four generals to help govern. Tension escalated between Hideyoshi and Katsuie, at the Battle of Shizugatake in the following year, Hideyoshi destroyed Katsuie's forces. Hideyoshi had thus consolidated his own power, dealt with most of the Oda clan, controlled 30 provinces. In 1582, Hideyoshi began construction of Osaka Castle. Built on the site of the temple Ishiyama Hongan-ji destroyed by Nobunaga, the castle would become the last stronghold of the Toyotomi clan after Hideyoshi's death. Nobunaga's other son, Oda Nobukatsu, remained hostile to Hideyoshi.

He allied himself with Tokugawa Ieyasu, the two sides fought at the inconclusive Battle of Komaki and Nagakute. I

Gilbert Ironside the younger was an English churchman and academic, Warden of Wadham College, Oxford from 1667, Bishop of Bristol and Bishop of Hereford. He was the third son of Gilbert Ironside the elder, born at Winterbourne Abbas. On 14 November 1650, he matriculated at Wadham College, where he graduated BA on 4 February 1653, MA on 22 June 1655, BD on 12 October 1664, DD on 30 June 1666, he became scholar of his college in 1651, fellow in 1656, was appointed public reader in grammar in 1659, bursar in 1659 and 1661, sub-warden in 1660, librarian in 1662. He was presented in 1663 to the rectory of Winterbourne Faringdon by Sir John Miller, with which he held from 1666, in succession to his father, the rectory of Winterbourne Steepleton. On the promotion of Walter Blandford to the See of Oxford, he was elected Warden of Wadham College on 7 December 1665, an office which he held for 25 years until his resignation on 7 October 1689. According to Anthony Wood, he was opposed to the high-handed John Fell, refused to serve as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford during Fell's lifetime.

After Fell's death in 1686, he filled the office from 1687 to 1689. When King James II made his visit to Oxford in September 1687 with the aim of compelling Magdalen College to admit his nominee Anthony Farmer as President, in a discussion with the King, Ironside insisted on the fellows' rights, he declined in November an invitation to dine with the King's special commissioners on the evening after they had expelled the fellows of Magdalen. After the Glorious Revolution, Ironside was rewarded for his resistance by being appointed bishop of Bristol. On the death of Herbert Croft, he was transferred to the see of Hereford in July 1691. Near the turn of the century when he was about sixty years of age, according to Wood, Ironside married a widow of Bristol, née Robinson, he died on 27 August 1701, was buried in the church of St. Mary Somerset, Thames Street, London. On the demolition of that church in 1867, the bishop's remains were transferred to Hereford Cathedral. Ironside published, with a short preface, Nicholas Ridley's account of a disputation at Oxford on the sacrament, together with a letter of John Bradford's, a sermon preached before the king on 23 November 1684.

A portrait is in the hall of Wadham College. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Ironside, Gilbert". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900

The Askari Monument in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, is a memorial to the askari soldiers who fought in the British Carrier Corps in World War I. It is located at the center of roundabout between Samora Avenue and Maktaba Street, a place that also marks the exact center of downtown Dar, it was unveiled in 1927. The main feature of the monument is "The Askari", a bronze statue of a soldier, it was realized in the United Kingdom by British sculptor James Alexander Stevenson, who worked for Westminster's Morris Bronze Founders. Stevenson signed the statue with pseudonym "Myrander". Before being sent to Dar es Salaam, the statue was exhibited for a while at the Royal Academy, receiving critical praise; the soldier has a rifle with a bayonet pointed towards the Dar es Salaam harbour. The statue stands on a pedestal. On the narrow sides of the pedestal are plaques with a dedication in Swahili and English. In the place where the Askari Monument is located, there used to be another statue, namely that of German explorer and army Major Hermann von Wissmann, governor of German East Africa in the late 19th century.

This former statue, unveiled in 1911, represented Wissmann standing, one hand on his hip and one on his sword, looking towards the harbour. When the British entered Dar es Salaam in 1916, they removed this statue along with those of Karl Peters and Otto von Bismarck; the monument in Dar es Salaam belongs to a group of three Askari Monuments that were all unveiled the same year in different parts of what was British East Africa: the other two are at Mombasa and Nairobi. Askari Monument