Doomed To Reheat

They’d gone through it a couple times before. The people of Cuba had risen up against their Imperial Spanish overlords previously in the Ten Years War and the Little War (way to give a war a complex) and both times the rebellions were quelled. This was back in the 1870’s, and we were a little preoccupied with our reconstruction projects. But twenty years later, when a new generation of revolting Cubans were formented, we took notice. February 24, 1895, one hundred twenty two years ago today, coordinated revolts sprung up all over the cuban island, most notably in Guantanamo and Santiago. Spain responded by sending a fleet to quell the uprisers, and we sent a ship down to monitor the whole shebang. Unfortunately, our ship, the Maine exploded in Havana harbor. It’s never really been determined how the ship blew up, but common understanding suggests it was an onboard accident. But Hearst and Pulitzer had none of that, and alongside the puffed up stories of Spanish atrocities to the Cuban people, we have