In June 1859, an American farmer on a tiny island in the Pacific Northwest shot a pig. The pig belonged to the British. Within weeks, the United States and Great Britain were pointing warships at each other, and the two most powerful nations on Earth were one bad order away from a third war.

The island was San Juan, a rocky piece of land between Vancouver Island and the Washington mainland that both countries claimed. American settlers and agents of the Hudson's Bay Company lived side by side in an arrangement that worked until it didn't.

The farmer's name was Lyman Cutlar. The pig was a large black Berkshire boar belonging to an Irishman named Charles Griffin, who worked for the Hudson's Bay Company. The boar had been breaking into Cutlar's garden and eating his potatoes. On the morning of June 15th, Cutlar found it rooting through his crops again. He shot it.

Cutlar offered to pay ten dollars. Griffin demanded a hundred. Cutlar refused. Griffin threatened to have him arrested. Cutlar told Griffin that the pig had been trespassing, and that if Griffin wanted to complain, he could take it up with the American government.

The American government responded by sending sixty-six soldiers under the command of Captain George Pickett. This was the same George Pickett who would later lead the most famous infantry charge of the Civil War at Gettysburg. The British responded by sending five warships carrying over seventy guns. Captain Pickett told his men to hold their ground. The British naval commander, Rear Admiral Robert Baynes, looked at the situation and refused to fire. He said he would not involve two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig.

Both sides dug in. The Americans built a camp at the south end of the island. The British built one at the north end. For thirteen years, they sat there, soldiers from two empires stationed within sight of each other, over a pig that had been dead since the first day.

In 1872, Kaiser Wilhelm the First of Germany appointed a commission to arbitrate. It ruled in favour of the United States. The British packed up and left. The only casualty of the entire conflict was the pig.

Both camps are still there. You can visit them. They are a national historical park.

I do one of these a day. Dead serious. Subscribe.