Iraq, Libya is now also Syria. The imagination of modern hawks is scarce, or it is the case in past centuries. Here are ten facts from the past years:
1. There was once a real war in New York. When the British got tired of the Indians, who, in general, quite peacefully (by mutual agreement) lived in Manhattan, the British found a formal reason: an Indian girl was caught stealing peaches in the garden of a high-ranking Englishman, and the Indians were completely cut out. This went down in history as the Peach War.
2. Because of the insolently stolen pearl wedding necklace, two Viking tribes fought for 4 years, and, they say, it is because of this war that there are now Swedes and Norwegians (who could easily be one people). And, by the way, the necklace was not so pretty: three strands of rough-cut freshwater pearls on a leather cord.
3. French and Spanish monarchs simply loved to swear over women. One or the other king seduced another's wife or mistress, and, as a rule, it turned out that she was a blood relative of another king. Because of this, at least 4 wars took place between France and Spain, the longest of which lasted 7, 5 years.
4. And the British could not share the land with the Spanish and Portuguese. Of course, it’s not a sin to argue, for example, for Africa, but once it turned out quite funny: for more than 4 years, the British staunchly repelled the attacks of the Portuguese in the besieged fortress, and then it turned out that the island over which the dispute was going on could fit entirely inside this fortress. The messenger incorrectly indicated the scale on the drawn map.
5. In Brazil, two high-ranking officials did not share four boxes of smuggled Cuban cigars. The war lasted 3, 5 years.
6. In medieval China, 15 thousand soldiers and officers died in three years because one aristocrat in the heat of an argument pulled another's beard - the worst insult is simply impossible to imagine!
7. And in Africa to start a war - generally a pair of trifles. In 1834, one village head argued with another over a cow that seemed to be drowned in a swamp, or maybe it was eaten by wild animals, but the shaman said that it had been stolen. In general, the war began, and two years later both tribes exterminated each other completely.
8. Japan. Arriving at the negotiations with the powerful shogun, the ambassadors stopped half a meter further from the throne than etiquette prescribed, and got up from their knees half a minute earlier when handing over the gift - brocade shoes embroidered with rubies. The blood feud of the samurai and the descendants of the shogun dragged on for 250 years, as a result of which two-thirds of the island of Hokkaido was burned and about 150 thousand people died.
9. How touchy were the rulers of the ancient Assyrians. The tortoiseshell war, which lasted almost five centuries, began because a guest from the near abroad, invited to the palace of the Assyrian king, did not pick up an inlaid tortoiseshell comb from the floor, which was dropped, say, directly, by the not quite sober queen.
10. In 1249 a soldier from Bologna fled to Modena, capturing an old oak tub, from which he watered his horse. The authorities of Bologna demanded to give them not a deserter, but a tub. Refused, Bologna began a war against Modena that lasted 22 years and was accompanied by significant destruction. And the tub still remains in Modena and is kept in one of the city's towers.
