Any decent space opera is littered with battles, and while there is a dearth of real life space battles to research, there are abundant lessons to be learned from researching actual battles. Doing this research lead to learning some really weird facts; I don’t know how I’ll ever incorporate this, but I really want to: The time the crew of the USS O’Bannon fought a Japanese Submarine with Maine Potatoes.

http://www.historybyzim.com/2012/03/the-maine-potato-episode/