<span>The 17th century saw Sweden as an European "Great Power" and one of the major military and political combatants on the continent during the Thirty Years' War. By mid-century, the kingdom included part of Norway, all of Finland and stretched into Russia. Sweden's control of portions of modern Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Germany made the Baltic Sea essentially a Swedish lake.</span>
, Antietam was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history with over 23,000 casualties (men listed as killed, wounded, captured or missing) in roughly 12 hours. The battle ended the Confederate invasion of Maryland in 1862 and resulted in a Union victory.
