Not much is needed to unleash hostilities.
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 cut out completely. 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 have been one people). And by the way, the necklace was not so pretty: three strands of roughly cut river pearls on a leather cord.
3. The 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 occurred 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 is 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, four cases of smuggled Cuban cigars were not shared by two senior officials. The war lasted 3.5 years.
6. In medieval China, 15 thousand soldiers and officers died in three years due to the fact that one aristocrat in the heat of an argument pulled another's beard - the worst insult is simply impossible to imagine!
7. And in Africa, starting a war is generally a trifle. In 1834, one village head argued with another over a cow that seemed to be drowned in a swamp, or maybe wild animals ate it, but the shaman said that it had been stolen. In general, the war began, and two years later both tribes exterminated each other completely.
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8. Japan. Arriving at the negotiations with the powerful shogun, the ambassadors stopped half a meter further from the throne than was prescribed by etiquette, 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 the 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, seizing 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.
