What are the origins of this fun-filled festive custom?
In just 38 minutes, the Anglo-Zanzibar War of August 27, 1896 was declared, fought, and won by forces of the British Empire against the Zanzibar Sultanate. It's the shortest war in history.
An alleged and entirely bloodless contest existed between the Netherlands and England's Isles of Scilly (pictured), an archipelago off the southwestern tip of Cornwall, for 335 years—without a shot being fired! The origins of the conflict can be found in the English Civil War when the Dutch, seeking to maintain their alliance with England, sided with the Royalists, who were eventually defeated by Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentarians.
Technically 116 years in length, the Hundred Years' War was a series of armed engagements between the kingdoms of England and France during the late Middle Ages. The prolonged conflict was fought by such figures as Henry V, Joan of Arc, and Edward the Black Prince. France ultimately emerged as victorious.
The Eighty Years' War, otherwise known as the Dutch War of Independence, saw the Netherlands struggle to break free from Spanish rule. Finally, in 1648, Spain's Philip II relinquished control of the Seventeen Provinces—the imperial states of the Hapsburg Netherlands. Pictured is the November 1576 sacking of Antwerp by the Spanish Army.
Also called the War of the Cities, this conflict pitted Prussia and Poland against the might of the Teutonic Order. It ended in victory for the Prussian Confederation and the Polish Crown.
France and her traditional enemy Great Britain battled it out for global preeminence in a protracted war that quickly developed across numerous fronts, with battles taking place in the Americas, India, Africa, and Central Europe involving allies of each nation and rival colonial forces. The most famous confrontation was that fought between an Anglo-Prussian coalition against France, Austria, Spain, Russia, and Sweden.
The Vietnam War is also known as the Second Indochina War. If you include the near-nine years of fighting that took place during the First Indochina War, add that tally to the 20-year war in Vietnam, you understand why the conflict is sometimes referred to as the Ten Thousand Day War, that number more or less equating to 30 years.
On April 13, 1975, a gun battle between members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Kataeb Christian militia spread to parts of Beirut, thus precipitating a 15-year civil war in Lebanon that resulted in an estimated 100,000 dead and hundreds of thousands more displaced.
The campaign known as the Hundred Days Offensive took place during the First World War and while not a war in itself it is worth mentioning for the epic assault undertaken by Allied forces that began on August 8 with the Battle of Amiens and ran to November 11, 1918, a push that effectively brought the four-year war to an end.
The Six-Day War was an armed conflict fought from June 5 to 10, 1967 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states primarily comprising Jordan, Syria, and Egypt (then known as the United Arab Republic).
Israel again found itself in conflict with its neighbors, a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria, in what became known as the Yom Kippur War, fought from October 6 to 25, 1973.
In response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, Operation Desert Shield, a US-led coalition of 35 nations, was initiated. On January 17, 1991, Operation Desert Storm, the ground offensive stage of the campaign, began. It ended five weeks later, on February 28, with the taking back of Kuwait City and the liberation of the country.
The eight-year Iran-Iraq War began on September 22, 1980 with a full-scale invasion of Iran by neighboring Iraq. It ended in a stalemate, with around 500,000 lives lost.
While relatively short, the Korean War was exceptionally bloody, claiming nearly five million lives, over half of which were civilians. Fighting ended on July 27, 1953, and an armistice agreement signed. However, no peace treaty was ever signed, and the two Koreas are technically still at war.
The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 lasted just 13 days, from December 3 to 16. It occurred during the wider Bangladesh Liberation War, which had begun earlier, in March.
A border dispute after Ottoman withdrawal at the end of the First World War led to 24 days of war in December 1918 between the newly-independent Democratic Republic of Georgia and the First Republic of Armenia. In this image taken by an unknown photographer, Armenian volunteer soldiers are seen defending their border.
The Greco–Turkish War of 1897 ended in an easy victory for Turkey. Fighting began on April 18 and ended 32 days later, on May 20, after the decisive Battle of Velestino.
The Falklands War began after Argentina invaded two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. The United Kingdom responded by deploying a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Air Force. The undeclared 10-week war took place between April 2 and June 14, 1982, resulting in British forces retaking the islands.
The series of conflicts between states of the Greco-Roman world and two successive Iranian empires, known as the Persian-Roman Wars, were fought over an astonishing 681 years—one of the longest military conflicts in recorded history.
The Arab-Byzantine Wars were a series of military engagements between a number of Muslim Arab dynasties and the Byzantine Empire between the 7th and 12th centuries. The wars are noted for the use of incendiary weapons (pictured), first employed by the Byzantine Navy during naval battles.
The coordinated and ruthless series of campaigns conducted by Christian states in medieval Spain and Portugal to recapture territory from the Muslims (Moors), who had occupied most of the Iberian Peninsula in the early 8th century, was known as the Reconquista. It took 781 years to complete.
Regarded as the first European war of the 21st century, the Russo-Georgian War took just 12 days to play out, from August 1 to 12, 2008. In little under two weeks, invading Russian forces captured and occupied the rebel-held provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Sources: (Britannica) (Royal Collection Trust) (Atlantic Council) (War History Online)
See also: History's silliest excuses for war
The Slovenian War of Independence lasted 10 days, from June 27 to July 7, 1991, after Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia. The brief conflict concluded with the signing of the Brioni Agreement, which put an end to hostilities in Slovenia during the Balkan crisis in the 1990s.
The Norman Conquest was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army made up of thousands of Normans, Bretons, Flemish, and men from other French provinces that began in September 1066. On October 14, the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Conqueror, defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings. Complete victory over the English had taken just 17 days. Pictured is a section of the Bayeaux Tapestry depicting the famous battle.
It took just 14 days for Bulgarian forces to win the Serbo-Bulgarian War, claiming final victory at the Battle of Dragoman on November 23, 1885.
One of the most brutal and destructive wars in European history, the Thirty Years' War raged between 1618 to 1648 across various European battlefields. It began as a religious conflict among the Catholic and Protestant states that formed the Holy Roman Empire. It later developed into a political struggle about which group would ultimately govern Europe. By the war's end, over eight million soldiers and civilians had died, with the map of Europe permanently rewritten.
France faced a European coalition—a Grand Alliance—mostly comprising the Holy Roman Empire, with England, Holland, Spain, Sweden, and others, in a conflict that was also fought in North America, South America, and as far afield as Asia. After nine years, the war ended in a stalemate.
The Football War, also known as the Hundred Hours' War, was an astonishingly brief military conflict between El Salvador and Honduras that began on July 14, 1969, apparently triggered by fighting on the soccer terraces between rival fans during a 1970 FIFA World Cup qualifier. Both countries deployed aircraft to carry out bombing raids on the other before a ceasefire was declared on July 18—a hundred hours after hostilities had begun.
The Apache-Mexico Wars began in the 1600s with the arrival of Spanish colonists in present-day New Mexico. The conflict reached a bloody zenith in the mid-19th century when it coincided with the Apache Wars of the United States. After 400-years-plus, peace was finally achieved in 1901, though Mexico continued to operate against hostile Apache bands as late as 1915.
Wars have been fought for all sorts of ridiculous reasons, but none more so than because of a loose hound. The War of the Stray Dog, also known as the Incident at Petrich, was an 11-day conflict between Greece and Bulgaria, fought from October 19 to 29, 1925. Hostilities began after Bulgarian border guards shot and killed a Greek soldier who ran after his dog. A brief invasion of Bulgaria by Greece ensued, and was immediately resolved at the League of Nations. Pictured is the French periodical Le Petit Journal, whose cover depicts the incursion.
Is it possible to conduct a short, decisive war? If so, why have some conflicts lasted centuries? History has witnessed thousands of military engagements and, no matter how long they've taken, most have been brutal, bloody, and futile. So, does a quick war result in an easy victory, or must thousands perish over years or even decades before a surrender is achieved?
Click through and study this list of some of the longest and shortest wars in history.
The longest and shortest wars in history
Here are the quickest conflicts, and the most protracted
LIFESTYLE Conflict
Is it possible to conduct a short, decisive war? If so, why have some conflicts lasted centuries? History has witnessed thousands of military engagements and, no matter how long they've taken, most have been brutal, bloody, and futile. So, does a quick war result in an easy victory, or must thousands perish over years or even decades before a surrender is achieved?
Click through and study this list of some of the longest and shortest wars in history.