This week is International Nurses Day and to mark the occasion, this post looks at some of the military nurses we have found in the Deceased Online collections Florence Nightingale (middle) in 1886 with her graduating class of nurses from St Thomas' outside Claydon House , Buckinghamshire Friday 12 May 2017 is International Nurses Day . This celebration of nurses' contributions to our society has been marked every year since 1965 by the International Council of Nurses (ICN) . In 1974 the Council agreed that the event should fall annually on 12 May - the birthday of the creator of formal modern nursing, Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) . Nightingale rose to prominence during the Crimean War of 1854-6 when she ran the Barrack Hospital in Scutari (in modern Turkey ) . Although Nightingale is buried in the rural churchyard of St Margaret of Antioch in East Wellow, Hampshire , many of her contemporaries can be found in urban cemeteries, The only known photograph of