USS Maine explodes in Havana

1898NotableContested

The US battleship Maine blows up in Havana harbor, killing more than 260 sailors. Newspapers blame Spain, and the cry 'Remember the Maine' helps push the US into war.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First stars ignite → Supernovae seed heavy elements → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → Apes split from monkeys → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Natufian villages → Oldest known bread → Agriculture begins → Irrigation → Uruk and the first cities → Cylinder seals → Writing (cuneiform) → Babylonian mathematics → Babylonian astronomical diaries → Thales and natural philosophy → Trial and death of Socrates → Plato's Academy → Aristotle's Lyceum → Alexander's conquests → Death of Alexander and the Hellenistic kingdoms → Seleucid Empire founded → Parthian Empire founded → Sasanian Empire → Birth of Muhammad → Muhammad's first revelations → The Hijra → Conquest of Mecca → Death of Muhammad and the Rashidun caliphate → Arab conquests → Abbasid Caliphate → Battle of Talas → Paper reaches the Islamic world → House of Wisdom → Al-Khwarizmi and algebra → Fibonacci's Liber Abaci → Bills of exchange → Medici Bank → Double-entry bookkeeping → Muscovy Company → English East India Company → Seven Years' War → Stamp Act → Boston Tea Party → American Revolution → Declaration of Independence → French Revolution → Napoleon takes power → Latin American independence wars → Monroe Doctrine → USS Maine explodes in Havana

Contested history

Consensus: The cause has never been settled: Navy inquiries in 1898 and 1911 blamed a mine, while a 1976 study led by Admiral Rickover pointed to a fire in a coal bunker.

An external mineDebated

Both Navy courts of inquiry cited bottom plates bent inward, and a 1998 computer study found a mine more probable than previously thought.

A coal bunker fire set off a magazineDebated

Rickover's 1976 study found no technical evidence of an external blast.

Spain blew up the shipUnsupported

No evidence links the Spanish government, which was trying to avoid war.

A US false flagUnsupported

No document supports the claim that Americans destroyed their own ship.