Curated category
Wars involving the United Kingdom
- War of the Third CoalitionThe War of the Third Coalition was a conflict that remade Europe in the space of a few months in 1805 and into 1806. At its heart was a single breathtaking…
- Crimean WarThe Crimean War began in October 1853 when Russian troops crossed the River Prut into Ottoman-controlled Moldavia and Wallachia, and it would not end until…
- Iraq WarAt 5:34 in the morning on the 20th of March 2003, Baghdad time, the United States began bombing Iraq. There was no declaration of war.
- War of the Fourth CoalitionThe War of the Fourth Coalition climaxed on the 27th of October 1806, when Napoleon walked into Berlin and stopped at the tomb of Frederick the Great.
- French Revolutionary WarsThe French Revolutionary Wars began in the spring of 1792 with a declaration of war against Austria and Prussia, and they did not end until 1802.
- French invasion of Egypt and SyriaThe French invasion of Egypt and Syria left its most vivid record not in French dispatches but in the pages of an Egyptian scholar.
- Second Boer WarThe Second Boer War began on the 11th of October 1899, when Boer forces crossed into British-held Natal and the Cape Colony.
- Gulf WarThe Gulf War pitted Iraq against a coalition of 42 countries led by the United States. On the 2nd of August 1990, Iraq invaded its small neighbor Kuwait and…
- War of 1812The War of 1812 began on the 18th of June 1812, when President James Madison signed a declaration of war against Britain into law, setting off a conflict…
- Anglo-Iraqi WarThe Anglo-Iraqi War began in earnest at 05:00 on the 2nd of May 1941, when 33 aircraft lifted off from RAF Habbaniya into the pre-dawn dark.
- The TroublesThe Troubles , Na Trioblóidí in Irish , scarred Northern Ireland for roughly thirty years, from the late 1960s to 1998. More than 3,500 people died.
- Korean WarAt 4:40 in the morning on the 25th of June 1950, the Korean People's Army crossed the 38th parallel behind a wall of artillery fire.
- Second French intervention in MexicoOn the 19th of June 1867, Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria stood on the Cerro de las Campanas outside Querétaro and faced a firing squad alongside…
- Greek Civil WarThe Greek Civil War began not with a declaration or a battle line, but with a demonstration. On the 3rd of December 1944, at least 200,000 people marched…
- Peninsular WarThe Peninsular War was, by Napoleon Bonaparte's own admission, a wound that would not close. He called it the "Spanish ulcer." Between 1808 and 1814, France…
- Taiping RebellionThe Taiping Rebellion may be the deadliest civil war in all of human history. Estimates place the death toll between 20 and 30 million people, roughly 5 to…
- Indian Rebellion of 1857The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began not with a grand proclamation but with a parade-ground refusal. On the 10th of May 1857, sepoys of the British East India…
- Syrian civil warThe Syrian civil war began in March 2011, when crowds gathered across Syria to demand democratic change from a government that had ruled by fear for decades.
- World War IIThe second world war is humanity's largest catastrophe. Listen to it told soberly, from the Holocaust to the bomb, then follow the thread deeper.
- World War IWorld War I began with two pistol shots fired in a Sarajevo street on the 28th of June 1914. Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, had taken his position after…
- War on terrorOn the morning of the 11th of September 2001, nineteen men hijacked four jet airliners, all of them bound for California.
- Phoney WarThe Phoney War lasted eight months, from September 1939 to May 1940, and it may be one of the strangest intervals in the history of modern warfare.
- Finnish WarThe Finnish War began on the 21st of February 1808, when 24,000 Russian troops crossed the Swedish-Russian border at Ahvenkoski.