A drunk man propositions a woman, which leads to one of the grizzliest bloodbaths in human history.
A mere soccer game ends with fans killing each other and subsequent war.
A pig, a pig of all things, has people from the two most powerful nations in the world
wanting to tear chunks out of each other. Today you’ll be disturbed, delighted,
and disheartened when you hear what people have fought bloody wars over.
10. 10,000 Bulgarians and 20,000 Greeks went to war
in the year 1925. Around 175 men lost their lives, and it all started over the matter of a stray dog.
Yes, you heard that right. Men started killing each other because of a homeless pooch.
The dog was the catalyst at least because these two countries at the start of the 20th century
had not exactly been getting along. They’d been at each other’s throats for a number
of years over who owned Macedonia and Western Thrace, which led to years of guerrilla warfare.
To cut a long story short, after the Second Balkan War in 1913,
and following the First World War from 1914 to 1918, these places fell under Greek control. But
seeing as the majority of the population there was Bulgarian, well, a lot of people weren’t too happy
about that. For years in the 1920s, Bulgarian revolutionaries made that point pretty darn clear.
But then in 1925, there was an incident that really kicked things off. On October 18,
a dog ran across the border of the two countries and a Greek soldier, fond of that dog, chased
after it. A Bulgarian soldier then opened fire and killed the Greek guy. Others were also shot.
We’re not sure if the dog survived, but what happened next was a declaration of war.
A war sometimes referred to as the War of the Stray Dog. Before that, Bulgarian officials had
said the shooting of the soldier was just an unfortunate incident and said it would
investigate the matter. The Greeks weren’t having any of it, and with General Theodoros
Pangalos at the helm, an ultimatum was given. That was, get down on your knees and apologize,
punish the men who did the killing, and also give two million French francs to the
families of the soldiers that died. The Bulgarians weren’t prepared to do that,
and before you could say WOOF, Greek soldiers were occupying Bulgarian territory.
The Bulgarians amassed an army that included war veterans and civilian volunteers, but it
was no match for the Greeks, whose army marched through villages doing some pillaging on the way
and killing Bulgarian civilians. Meanwhile, the Bulgarian government
had asked the League of Nations for help, an organization comprising most major European powers
supposed to be keeping the peace on the continent. The league ordered a ceasefire
and said Greece would have to pay forty-five thousand pounds in compensation to Bulgaria.
Greece wasn’t too happy about the number given, but it did as it was told. That was the end of
this conflict, and you can be sure that a lot of people asked questions about how on earth it
could have started after such a small issue. But worse things have happened, as you’ll now see.
9. This conflict is
sometimes called the 100-hour war, in relation to how long it lasted, but we much prefer the name
it is better known by: The Football War. As with most wars that seem to start for
no apparent reason, there is always tension before things get heated, kind of literally
in this case. The tension here was between the countries of Honduras and El Salvador and
were related mostly to land issues and poverty. You see, El Salvador had a population of about
three million people at the time living in a tiny country only about the size of Wales in the UK.
Most of the land in the country was in the hands of the elites, so there wasn’t much
left for the working farmers. Meanwhile, Honduras was close to five times bigger and
only had a population of around 2.3 million. Farmers weren’t much better off there, either.
But what had been happening as a result of this was the mass migration of 300,000 Salvadorans to
Honduras to farm the available land, often working for fruit companies based in Europe. This going
over the border miffed a lot of Hondurans, who said, wait a minute, this is our land.
Then things got much worse when a land reform law came into action
and some of the land owned by Salvadorans was just taken from them. This law disregarded any
immigration status they had or even if they were married to Hondurans. Even people who’d settled
in Honduras for some time were told they had lost their land and with many others were kicked out
of the country. It was a terrible thing to happen and it affected thousands of people.
So, it was with this tension that the national teams met in a game of football in 1969.
You can imagine that the fans were somewhat rowdy.
It was a big game, too, part of the 1970 World Cup Qualifiers. On June 8, 1969, the first game
was played in Honduras and the home team won 1-0. There were, of course, fights between fans.
On June 15, the next game was played but this time in El Salvador. The Salvadorans won this time,
3-0. To say the Honduran team and the fans were met with rage is an understatement.
They were hated, and the crowd let that be known. The game was so tense that the Honduras coach
later remarked, “We are awfully lucky that we lost.” Had they won, all hell would have broken
loose, but then again, it kind of did anyway. After the game, things got so heated that
Hondurans living in El Salvador were attacked, with some of them being killed. Many Hondurans
out of fear for their lives decided it was time to go back over the border.
Diplomatic ties between the countries were then severed after the El Salvadoran government said
11,700 Salvadorans had left Honduras out of fear. It said the Honduran government had
done absolutely nothing to stop murders, assaults, plundering, and mass expulsion.
Now with one game won each, there was a deciding match to be played at Mexico City’s
Azteca Stadium. In an incredibly tense game, the score was 2-2 after 90 minutes, meaning there was
just a bit of stoppage time to be played. There was a hell of a lot of stoppage time, in fact.
In the 11th minute of added time, El Salvador’s Mauricio “Pipo” Rodríguez
found himself in the Honduran penalty area to meet a cross and shoot past the Honduran
goalkeeper Jaime Varela, perhaps one of the most meaningful goals of all time.
Just over two weeks later on July 14 the tension created by the footbal game broke.
Salvadoran troops marched down roads connecting the two countries, hoping to make it all the
way to the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. The Salvadoran military even used passenger
planes to fly over Honduras and drop bombs that had been connected to the side of the planes.
Now it was all-out war. Honduras fought back, launching bombers to attack important targets such
as oil facilities. Both countries deployed rather old American-made fighter planes that occasionally
got involved in dogfights. On July 18, the US managed to get the countries to agree to a
ceasefire, although by that time, it is estimated that 3,000 people had died in the conflict.
Even though it became known as the Football War, experts say the conflict was bound to
happen anyway, but those games sure helped things along. They now say the main problem was greedy,
land-owning elites, but isn’t that often the case when poor people fight each other.
The games were very important, though, with The Guardian newspaper reporting back then that things
got so heated because of “alleged persecution… stemming from an international football match.”
The scorer of that winning goal, Rodríguez, said many years later that he didn’t think
he had much effect on the war, telling the BBC when he was in his 70s, “For me,
that goal will always be a source of sporting pride. What I am sure of is that the authorities
and politicians made use of our sports victory to glorify El Salvador's image.”
Now you’ll see how blood stained the streets in the past over a stolen bucket. That’s crazy,
but it’s par for the course in this show. 8.
It’s quite beyond the pale that someone would go to war over a simple bucket,
but since the conflict is known as “The War of the Bucket” you’ll have to take our word for it.
It all went off in 1325 and the combatants were the city-states of Bologna and Modena
in northern Italy. Remember, that back then there was no such thing as the country of Italy.
To understand the conflict, you first have to know something about the Guelphs and Ghibellines. In
basic terms, the Guelphs supported the Pope, but the Ghibellines were behind the Holy Roman Empire,
and a conflict between these groups lasted for hundreds of years. Modena
was Ghibelline and Bologna was Guelph. We won’t spend too much time on this since some
amount of legend might have got mixed up in the reality of things, but one story goes that a bunch
of Modenese soldiers went into Bologna and stole an oak pail. They were so made up with this little
conquest that they put the thing on display. The Bolognese were furious. This wasn’t just about
a bucket but the sheer brazenness of them thinking they could just waltz right into town and take
their stuff. It was then that 30,000 Guelph soldiers and close to 2,000 cavalry got together
to help the Bolognese. The head of the army was none other than Pope John XXII.
The Ghibellines, meanwhile, still made up about their bucket, amassed 5,000 infantry
and 2,000 cavalry, ready to defend Modena and its bucket. The legend goes that it was
about this time that the Modenese were thinking, oops, maybe we shouldn’t have taken that bucket.
The forces met at Zappolino and even though the Modenese-Ghibelline fighters were vastly
outnumbered, they easily had the upper hand. The Guelph- Bolognese warriors went on the retreat,
to which it is said the other side made it known how happy they were with taunts along
the lines of, “We took your bucket and now we’ve kicked your butt.”
But did it all start with that bucket? The answer is, most historians do say a
bucket was definitely part of the conflict, but it is likely it wasn’t stolen at the
start but used after the war as a kind of trophy. Ok, so a bucket is one thing, but what if someone
took off your ear, and then told you to take it back home to the king? Would that warrant a war?
7. As you probably know,
Spain and the Brits were at each other’s throats for a while back in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Both countries were going around the world taking what they wanted, while they sometimes stole
from each other on the high seas. From 1727 to 1729 one of the many
Anglo-Spanish wars was fought, in which Spain attempted to get Gibraltar from the Brits and
also put a blockade on British ships trying to get to Porto Bello in Panama. In short,
it didn’t go too well for the Spanish. In 1729, the Treaty of Seville was signed,
and this made it possible for the Spanish to board British ships that were trading in the Americas.
This is where the ear trouble started. In 1731, just off the coast of Cuba,
a group of Spanish soldiers boarded a British trading ship named Rebecca. On that ship was
Captain Robert Jenkins, a man who worked for the East India Company. The ship had picked
up a load of sugar in the British colony of Jamaica and was taking it back to London.
The Rebecca was somewhere near Cuba when it was spotted by a Spanish sloop called the San Antonio,
whose captain was Juan León Fandiño. Shots were fired and the Spanish demanded to see
what was on the British ship, to which Mr. Jenkins seems to have given his approval.
The Spanish, now aboard the Rebecca, demanded to search for contraband,
and Jenkins it seems didn’t have much choice in the matter since a rope was put around his neck
and he was hoisted up the mast three times. As for what happened next to poor Jenkins,
we can go to a report written by none other than Benjamin Franklin. On October 7, 1731, he wrote
in the Pennsylvania Gazette that the Spanish Lieutenant then “took hold of his [Jenkins] left
Ear, and with his Cutlass slit it down; and then another of the Spaniards took hold of it and tore
it off, but gave him the Piece of his Ear again, bidding him carry it to his Majesty King George.”
This enraged the British back home, with people writing that the Spanish were nothing more than
barbarians and they’d shown such “insolence” towards the British king. How dare they. The
famous British poet Alexander Pope, wrote, “And own the Spaniard did a waggish thing,
who cropt our ears, and sent them to the king.” The Spanish meanwhile didn’t deny the ear
cropping, but they did say that Jenkins was just another darn British pirate,
people that had been making their lives a misery. And since ear-cropping was one of
the punishments of the day for things such as theft, they hadn’t done anything wrong.
Truth be known, Jenkins did have a bit of a reputation for being a smuggler, but he was used
in a way to incite hatred towards the Spanish. According to some accounts, Jenkins was ordered to
relay his story to the British House of Commons, whereupon he produced a bit of his decaying ear.
Whether that actually happened is up for debate, but the impact of this event is undeniable. From
1739 to 1748 the Spanish and British fought, and the name of the war was the “War of Jenkins' Ear.”
As you now know, the conflict was about way more than a mere ear. Jenkins didn’t matter one bit,
but money did. It’s hard to know exactly how many men and ships were lost during
this war in many different battles, but estimates state that Spain lost 186
ships to Britain’s 406 ships. As for deaths, Spain may have lost 4,500 men and Britain 30,000.
Let’s now look at some chaos that erupted in Mexico over some buns and cakes.
6. The war is known as the Pastry War, but it’s
also known as simply the First Franco-Mexican War. As you might know, Mexico gained its independence
from Spain in 1821. But you could say after that the country had a lot of growing pains.
During the first 20 years of independence, there were something like 20 different presidents, and
then in 1828, things really started to get crazy. There was almost total lawlessness on the streets,
with gangs going around attacking each other and looting from stores. Things went from bad
to worse when supporters of two presidential candidates named Manuel Gómez Pedraza and
Vicente Guerrero Saldaña clashed in the streets. A lot of foreigners lived in Mexico at the time,
including a lot of French people, and if they lost stuff to bandits or rioters they
didn’t really have much recourse to complain. To make matters worse for the French living there,
since France didn’t have trade agreements with Mexico as the US and Britain did,
there were higher taxes on French goods. It wasn’t a great time to be French in
Mexico, and so a bunch of French folks started asking for reparations from the Mexican government
for all the stuff they’d lost. One of them was Monsieur Remontel, who owned a pastry shop.
One day, he and that shop were attacked, and Mr. Remontel demanded some compensation.
Still, the guy wanted the outrageous sum of 60,000 pesos even though his shop on
the outskirts of Mexico City was probably not worth much more than 1,000 pesos. In 1838, the
French prime minister Louis-Mathieu Molé told the Mexican government to pay that cash and also pay
reparations to all the others that had been looted or had a family member killed in all the chaos.
He wanted the government to pay 600,000 pesos (3 million Francs), which was insane. You have
to remember that the daily wage in Mexico City at the time was about one peso. So,
that meant Mr. Pastry shop alone was asking for 60,000 times the daily wage.
Then that same year of 1838, the Mexican president Anastasio Bustamante said something
along the lines of “No, gracias. Estás loco.” The King of France wasn’t exactly pleased about
this, and he subsequently sent a fleet of ships to form a blockade in various
parts of Mexico. It was war and the French began attacking the fort of San Juan de Ulúa
at the entrance to the port of Veracruz. They then captured Veracruz and basically
caused a lot of havoc and loss of life, even though the Mexicans fought tooth and nail.
They even brought the great general, Antonio López de Santa Anna, out of retirement,
but he ended up losing a leg after being shot. It just wasn’t winnable for the Mexicans,
but with some British diplomacy the French pulled out after Mexico agreed to pay up that
600,000 pesos. Their greatest port also needed rebuilding and they’d lost a ton of money because
of the blockades. Arguably the biggest winner in the country was the now one-legged Santa Anna,
who became a hero even though he’d lost the port. By the way, the cash was never paid, which is
something the French used to justify the second French intervention in Mexico in 1861. It was the
Mexicans who came out winners in that war. Now for a totally pointless war.
5. The Kettle War,
also known as “The Battle of the Soup Kettle”, was undoubtedly one of the silliest wars on record. It
took place on October 8, 1784, but you have to go much farther back in time to really understand it.
In short, in the 16th century, Spain was ruled by the House of Habsburg.
Spain also ruled over the Netherlands, but then the northern Netherlands said we want
no part of that, and it formed its own Republic. The Habsburgs seemed to give this the green light,
but things soon started to go wrong. These northerners with their new Republic
closed a long stretch of river to the Spanish Netherlands. This was an economic highway
vital for European trade. Meanwhile, folks in the Spanish Netherlands were feeling a bit disgruntled
since they were now losing out financially. Then, in 1714, after a long war called the War of
the Spanish Succession, the Treaty of Rastatt was signed and the Spanish Netherlands became part of
Austria. But the north still kept that route closed and the folks now belonging to the
Austrian Netherlands were still angry. They stayed that way for a long time.
In 1781, Joseph II, the Holy Roman Emperor, said open that route up or else,
and while you’re at it, we want some territories back. He knew that the Dutch Republic had just
been in a long fight with the British in what we now call the “Fourth Anglo-Dutch War.” The
British had fallen out with the Republic over its friendship with the new United States. So,
the emperor saw a weak spot in the Republic since times were hard after fighting the Brits.
Nothing happened regarding his requests, so he sent his brand new flagship, the Le Louis,
to the disputed area on the River Scheldt, thinking things might just get feisty. The
Dutch Republic sent its own ship, the De Dolfijn. The weaker De Dolfijn fired first, which was
actually the only shot of the war. It hit no one, but it did make a nasty dent in the side of a soup
kettle. For reasons unknown, the Le Louis captain surrendered, even though he really did have the
much stronger ship and armory. After that bit of cowardice,
the emperor declared a real war. Perhaps he was embarrassed or really liked that kettle. France
then got involved, and it was agreed that the Republic would keep that route closed,
but it did agree to pay the enemy a bunch of cash as compensation for financial losses.
Now for a war over a flag that kept getting hacked down.
4. It’s sometimes called the Flagstaff War,
but goes by many names, including Hōne Heke's Rebellion and the Northern War. It was fought
on the Bay Islands around New Zealand from March 11, 1845, to January 11, 1846. The belligerents,
in this case, were those land-stealing Brits and some of their Māori allies against some other
Māori who really didn’t like the British. They were led by a fearsome warrior named Hōne Heke.
It was actually this guy that started the war, or at least his actions kicked it off. Prior to that,
Māori tribes were somewhat bothered when the signing of an 1840 treaty called the Treaty
of Waitangi made it possible for the Brits to legally have a presence in their country.
So, there was tension, and there is still debate today whether the Maori leaders who signed that
treaty actually knew exactly what they were signing. But let’s move on. Later in 1840,
the British formally annexed New Zealand, but some people were very unhappy,
including Hōne Heke over in the Bay Islands. He’d signed the treaty, but things weren’t
going as he had thought they would. For instance, he wasn’t over the moon about the Brits making
Auckland the capital of New Zealand. He and his people also lost cash when a tariff was introduced
on all the whaling ships, including American whaling ships, that went to the Bay Islands. Fewer
ships then went, and so the Bay Islands lost out. Then Heke and a chief named Pōmare got speaking
to some Americans and they were told about how those tax-loving Brits had been beaten
in the American colonies. Later, in 1842, the British executed the first person in New
Zealand since they’d been there. He was Wiremu Kīngi Maketū and he’d been accused of murder.
After seeing too much mistreatment by the British, this guy went on a murderous rampage,
killing a man named Thomas Bull, but then going on to murder some British women and children.
That’s never a good look anywhere, but when Heke heard about the execution he was
furious. Now with some help, he decided to move against the British. It took until 1844
to do their first flag business. Leading the operation was a chief named Te Haratua and
along with some of his men, he marched into the first British settlement of Kororāreka,
with their weapons swinging. The Auckland Chronicle reported the event, saying:
“They then proceeded to the flagstaff, which they deliberately cut down, purposely with
the intention of insulting the government, and of expressing their contempt of British authority.”
They cut down a flag and no one was harmed in the process.
The British were outraged, saying hey guys, you’ve done pretty well out of the trade we’ve brought
here, chill out – or something to that effect. Heke apparently apologized, but on January 10,
1845, he did some flag-cutting himself. The British put a new one up and even had
it guarded by lots of men, but lo and behold, it was cut down again. Now with a lot of confidence,
some of those Maori warriors started raiding. In March, they not only cut the flag down again,
but they killed a bunch of Brits. In the end, Kororāreka was pretty much burned to the ground.
This meant war and you can be sure the British bought their powerful ships.
It’s a long story, but it is thought during all the battles around 80
British and their allied Māori fighters died, and 60 to 90 other Māori died.
Scholars say the war ended with something of a stalemate and both sides were happy
to eventually sign for peace, but at the end of the day, those Brits got what they wanted.
A flag being cut down is certainly a dumb reason to go to war,
but as with other tales we’ve told you today, what makes a country or tribe snap is usually
just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Speaking of camels, there once was a war over one.
3. The Basus War,
or as it’s been called, The Camel War, took place in Arabia between some rival tribes likely between
the years 494 and 534. The conflict sounds a bit like that famous American beef between the
Hatfield and McCoy families, which has gone down in history as the worst American feud.
It was apparently the same deal in Arabia, with the feud also being
talked about as one of the worst vendettas in history. This is how things went down.
From the Bakr tribe, a woman named Al-Basous, went to visit her niece and nephew. But the niece,
Jalila, was married to a dude named Kulayb, and he was the leader of the Taghleb tribe. Al-Basous
was married to the leader of the Bakr tribe. Being of a short-tempered predisposition,
when Kulayb saw Al-Basous close to his territory, he picked up his bow and shot
an arrow into the camel, but not the woman. She was rightly peeved, and she took it out
on her nephew, which seems to have made him mad, too, because he went out and put
a spear in Kulayb’s back. That was seen as a massive sign of disrespect and cowardice.
Now there was war between the two tribes and a bloody one at that. At one point, the new Bakr
leader sent his son to the Taghleb tribe to try and negotiate peace, but they killed the son.
The father later said, “I will not talk to Taghleb until earth talks to me, never!”
The fighting lasted 40 years and as the story goes, almost all of the Taghleb died.
If only that guy hadn’t shot that camel or at least apologized for doing so.
Now we will ask you this. Do you think a drunk idiot ever started a war, or should we say
an absolute bloodbath? 2.
The answer is yes. Drunks might have started fights where you come from or even riots,
but we know of only one instance when a drunk buffoon started an all-out bloody war.
It is called the War of the Sicilian Vespers which is up there with the best-sounding war names ever.
Vesper by the way is not just a cute-looking Italian-made scooter but it was also a term
for prayer and for the evening. In this case, the Sicilian Vespers were a bunch
of rebels in Sicily who weren’t too keen on very violent and oppressive French rule.
Neither were the Sicilian elites who’d been sidelined by the French invaders.
Sicily has a very rich history, even if some of you only think about the place when you hear the
word mafia. It’s also had a very violent history, and one of those episodes of violence began on the
Easter Monday of March 30 in the year 1282. As the story goes, some Sicilians had been
celebrating the big day at the Church of the Holy Spirit near Palermo, when a bunch of wasted
French guys turned up and started harassing everyone. One of those guys, out of his mind,
grabbed a Sicilian woman and in a very vulgar manner told her he wanted to have sex with her.
The Italian historian Leonardo Bruni in 1416 also noted that when the French were
checking people for weapons they used it as an excuse to touch some inappropriate places.
The woman’s husband arrived on the scene and he was understandably angry, but you could say he
went over the top when he stabbed the rude French bloke to death. Some other drunk Frenchmen tried
to help, and they too felt some cold, hard steel, or were stoned to death with rocks.
Church bells then rang throughout the city, which meant get ready folks,
it is time to rebel. Mobs ran around shouting “Death to the French!” and they really,
truly meant it. They apparently went berserk, butchering any men they saw, but also women and
children. They broke into houses, took what they wanted, and burned them down. They even did some
killing of French monks and nuns. Paintings of the event depict a ruthless human slaughter.
One historian said this about the events: “Every Frenchman they met was struck down. They
poured into the inns frequented by the French and the houses where they dwelt, sparing neither man,
woman nor child. Sicilian girls who had married Frenchmen perished with their husbands.”
When they got hold of someone who they weren’t sure was French, they made him or her pronounce
the word “ciciri”, which is apparently very hard to pronounce for French people. Anyone who failed
the test was ripped to pieces by Sicilian knives. That first night, it is thought two thousand men,
women, and children were murdered. Within six weeks, 13,000 French folks were dead,
and the rebels had control of the island. When the blood was cleaned off the streets, the rebels
wrote to the Pope, a French pope, and said they wanted to be able to form their own government.
That didn’t happen. The short version is that Peter III of Aragon became Peter I of Sicily
and he said the Sicilians would live just fine under him. With the green light from the Pope,
French King Charles attacked again with his fleet from the Kingdom of Naples. The Sicilians,
now with help, fought off the French, so this was a victory for them, although in
the end the Kingdom of Sicily was divided into Aragonese Trinacria and Angevin Naples.
If you think they perhaps went a bit far in that first night of mass murder,
some historians say the whole thing was planned. The drunk dude with long arms was
just a good excuse to start the slaughter. We know you’ll love the next story since so
many of you are from the USA and the UK. The world could have been a very different place
if things had happened differently in this story, and to think it was all over a pig.
1. After the USA had gained
its independence from Great Britain, diplomatic relations were established and for the most part,
the countries got along and did a fair bit of trade together. Sure, there was the War of 1812,
which might have ended with 15,000 dead Americans and 10,000 dead from the British empire,
but after what’s now called a “military draw” the two powerhouses stayed mostly on good terms.
But then a pig was shot in 1859, and that made some folks angry. Hence, the Pig War was started.
In short, it was over territory, the spaces along what’s now the Canadian border. In 1846,
the Oregon Treaty was signed by both nations which meant a border was drawn at what we call
the 49th parallel. It’s still there now. But this line was a tricky thing indeed,
especially when it came to islands along the southwest of Vancouver. They were scattered,
so drawing a line and portioning things out wasn’t easy. One of the
more important islands was San Juan Island, a place where both Americans and Brits settled.
By the time 1859 rolled around, there were more British there than Americans,
including a company set up in London in 1670 called the Hudson’s Bay Company.
It had some salmon business on the island, while the Brits also had some ranches.
The American settlers were in fewer numbers. They actually got on pretty well, but there were
tensions and as you now know, tensions can lead to disasters quite easily. That happened on June 15,
when a British pig ended up walking onto the land of an American farmer named Lyman Cutlar.
When this trigger-happy guy spotted the pig eating his potatoes, he pulled out his rifle
and shot it dead. As all you folks know, you never mess with a man’s pig. The owner of the animal was
a Hudson’s Bay Company employee named Charles Griffin, and he was incensed. He had lots of
pigs and they always went on little excursions from his farm. Why shoot this one, he thought.
He then went to Cutlar to have it out, with the dialogue going a bit like this:
Cutlar: “It was eating my potatoes!” Griffin: “Rubbish. It’s up to you
to keep your potatoes out of my pig.” That was not a very intelligent retort,
but at least Cutlar offered to pay Griffin ten bucks in compensation.
Griffin didn't want cash and instead went to the British authorities and told them the story,
after which, they said they’d arrest Mr. Cutlar. The other Americans on the island got wind of
this and asked the American authorities to send over some soldiers to protect them.
Talk about a situation getting out of hand. But they were apparently genuinely afraid,
so they sent a petition to General William S. Harney, who at the time
was the commander of the Department of Oregon. Despite the incident only being over dead swine,
he wasted no time at all in sending over 66 soldiers from
the US 9th infantry. They arrived on July 27. James Douglas, the governor of British Columbia,
heard about this and thought, ok, it’s like that is it. I’ll match your 66-man band of
soldiers and raise you three top-notch British warships. More soldiers arrived over the months,
and in spite of the Americans being vastly outnumbered, they wouldn’t move an inch.
Then on the scene arrived the Commander-in-Chief of the British Navy in the Pacific,
Admiral Robert L. Baynes. No sooner than he got there, Douglas told him to attack the American
soldiers. To do that could possibly mean starting a huge war, something both countries could not
afford. But Baynes saw the situation for what it was and said to Douglas in a stern voice,
I will not “involve two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig.”
It was only around this time that both Washington and London got news about what was going down on
the island. The governments were frankly appalled that a dead pig had led to the appearance of 3
warships, 84 guns, and close to 2,600 soldiers. Diplomatic talk ensued, with both countries
agreeing that everyone should just chill and both sides should be allowed to keep
up to only 100 soldiers on the island. From then on, the Americans lived on the south
side of the island and the British on the north. They apparently got along just fine,
visiting each other’s sides all the time, only ever falling out when someone had too much booze.
Later in 1872, an international commission said the island should go to the US completely,
although Britain might have been happy enough with its territories in the new Dominion of Canada.
If you go to the island today, you can see a British Union Jack flag,
flown by the Americans to show goodwill. It’s always good to finish with a happy ending.
Now you need to watch “Why You Wouldn't Survive World War 3.”