▲

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. And, indeed, there have been plenty of ridiculous reasons to wage it. In this gallery, we detail some of the most incredulous excuses ever invented to go to war. Stray dogs, emus, and even soccer have been the final straw or the spark for violent conflict in the past, believe it or not.

Click on and discover some of the most absurd catalysts for war in recorded history!

▲Yes, this war between Britain and Spain, which lasted nine years, actually started because of a severed ear. In 1731, British Captain Robert Jenkins' ear was cut off by Spanish soldiers who he'd refused to let board his ship in the West Indies.

▲Fast forward to 1739, and the Brits really wanted to gain stronger trading positions in the Caribbean (at the expense of the Spanish). The only thing missing was a catalyst for war.

▲After racking their brains, they remembered the time in 1731 when that Spanish commander attacked Robert Jenkins, and a war was born.

▲In 1925 Greece and Bulgaria didn't like each other. At all. They'd fought on opposite sides of WWI and there was no love lost between them.

▲It all started when a dog got away from his owner, a Greek soldier, and ran across the border. The soldier, chasing him into Bulgarian territory, was of course shot dead by the Bulgarians.

▲The Greeks decided to invade and occupy the town of Petrich, and what followed was a conflict that at its height would draw 30,000 men to the battlefield.

▲Now of course this short war between Honduras and El Salvador wasn't actually about a soccer match. Relations were already deeply strained between the two countries. However, it was a catalyst.

▲In 1969 the countries' soccer teams met head-to-head for a single qualifying spot in the 1970 World Cup. Both countries won each of their games, so an all-deciding third match was played, in which El Salvador won.

▲

This, in addition to the existing political climate, led to mass looting of Salvadorian stores and companies based in Honduras, and diplomatic ties between the two countries were cut. Then on July 14, 1969, El Salvador invaded Honduras to "protect their citizens."

▲All in all, the war caused the deaths of more than 2,000 people. At the World Cup, El Salvador lost all three of its games without scoring a single goal.

▲In 1932, Australian leaders decided that there were just too many emus running around, as they were wreaking havoc on farmers' crops. Something needed to be done.

▲The solution? Send in soldiers with machine guns. However it wasn't that simple. The flightless birds proved remarkably resilient: they were super fast and just wouldn't die after the first bullet, so they quickly outstripped the army of their ammunition.

▲After a week of "fighting," the Australian army gave up. In total, only 2,500 out of an intended 20,000 emus were killed. So, in the end, the emus kind of won...

▲Today the US and the UK share some of the closest diplomatic bonds in world history, but it wasn't always like that. In 1859 relations between the countries were still strained.

▲On June 15 of that year, a wayward pig led the two countries to the brink of war. The pig ran from American settlers in Washington state and crossed into British-owned Canada. The Brits on the other side were herding sheep and shot the pig, which didn't go down too well with the Americans.

▲Both the British and the Americans placed troops along the border. The stand-off lasted four months, but eventually no shots were fired. This meant that the total number of casualties was limited to a single pig.

▲The War of Oaken Bucket was a conflict between two medieval Italian states that went to war in 1325, resulting in the deaths of 2,000 men. Why?

▲Well, apparently this conflict started because soldiers from Modena stole a bucket from Bologna's town well.

▲

The bucket can still be found in the town of Modena today. To be fair to both warring parties, it really is a nice bucket.

▲The War of the Sicilian Vespers began in French-occupied Sicily in 1282, and lasted for an incredible 20 years. Why exactly?

▲

It all started with rumors that a Sicilian woman had been harassed and groped by a drunk Frenchman during Easter Monday evening prayers.

▲This infuriated the Sicilians so much that over the course of the six weeks that followed, they're said to have massacred 4,000 Frenchmen. Various diplomatic mistakes prolonged hostilities for another couple of decades.

▲Not the start of a war, but the start of a battle. In 1788, Austria was at war in Turkey. After having been sent out to scout, a bunch of soldiers bumped into some travelers who offered them alcohol. The soldiers accepted.

▲

Sometime later and a little worse for wear, they came across another regiment of Austrian soldiers with whom they refused to share their alcohol. After that tensions grew, leading to full-blown chaos after a shot was allegedly fired.

▲The exact number casualties is unknown, though the most credible historical sources state at least 1,000 Austrian soldiers were either killed or wounded.

▲Also called the Spanish-South American War (Chili, Ecuador and Bolivia were all dragged into the conflict as well), on the surface this war seems purely territorial in nature. But what was so special about the Chincha Islands? Bird droppings, that's what.

▲

Thanks to the Guanay cormorants, a native bird species, the islands are very rich in guano, a fertilizer composed (among other things) of their poo. This made the islands a potentially valuable—if somewhat smelly—asset to all involved. One of the outcomes was Spanish recognition of Peruvian independence.