Category: Wars You Never Knew About
The Quasi War – A Young America Slugs It Out With France
“Known as the Quasi War… the seeds of this strange and often forgotten struggle were actually sown a generation earlier.” BARELY 15 YEARS after winning independence from Great Britain, the United States found itself in a brand…
The Sino-Vietnamese Conflict – Inside the Bloody 1979 Border War Between Beijing and Hanoi
“The fighting between the PLA and the Vietnamese lasted less than a month, but was surprisingly intense.” FOR MUCH OF the Cold War, Vietnam was where world powers sent their armies to be defeated. The…
Fightin’ Irish – How America’s Fenian Brotherhood Waged War on the British Empire
“To the Fenian Brotherhood, the campaign to seize Canada seemed entirely plausible. Unfortunately for them, things just didn’t work out that way.” IN 1866, one of the strangest armies in American history marched off to war….
Operation Unthinkable — Inside Churchill’s Proposed 1945 Surprise Attack on the Soviets
“It is to an early and speedy showdown and settlement with Russia that we must now turn our hopes.” WHILE THE WORLD celebrated the defeat of Nazism in May of 1945, one of the architects of…
Roll Over and Play Dead – The Ridiculous War of the Stray Dog
So far on this blog, we’ve heard about military standoffs caused by dead pigs, wooden buckets, bird droppings and a destroyed pastry shop. In this latest edition of Wars You Never Heard Of, we’re going…
The Mouse that Roared – Inside a Forgettable 100-Year Conflict Between France and a Tiny Village in Spain
“Nothing much came of the conflict. It’s unclear if the government of France knew or even cared that the people of the remote Andalusian town were up in arms.” WHEN Spain’s King Alfonso XII travelled…
