99 Fun Facts About Spanish-American War

Which 1898 war tax was still collected in 2006?

Phone calls: the one-cent levy fell only on costly long-distance calls, and though repealed and revived several times it outlived the war by more than a century.

In which harbour did the battleship Maine blow up on the night of 15 February 1898?

Havana: she had been sent after riots in the city to protect Americans there, and the blast killed most of the men aboard, turning a show of the flag into a cause for war.

Which territories did Spain cede to the US after the war of 1898?

Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines: Cuba, the cause of the war, was not annexed, because Congress had ruled that out in advance, and it became independent in 1902 under American supervision.

Who was US president during the Spanish-American War?

William McKinley: he held out against the war fever for two months after the Maine blew up, won re-election in 1900, and was shot dead by an assassin the following year.

Spanish general Valeriano Weyler earned which nickname in the American press for herding Cuban civilians into camps?

The Butcher: his camps were meant to cut the rebels off from the countryside, but hunger and disease killed civilians in vast numbers and turned American opinion against Spain.

Which exiled Cuban poet launched the 1895 uprising against Spanish rule?

José Martí: he had organised the revolt from New York, but he was killed in a skirmish within weeks of landing and became the martyr of Cuban independence, honoured as 'the Apostle'.

What is Cuba's first war of independence, begun in 1868, called?

The Ten Years' War: a sugar planter's call to arms started it, and the peace that ended it left Cuba Spanish, so its veterans took up arms again in 1895.

What name is given to the stolen 1898 message in which Spain's ambassador called the American president weak?

The de Lôme letter: Cuban rebels got hold of it and a New York paper ran it as 'The Worst Insult to the United States in Its History', forcing the ambassador out days before the Maine blew up.

Which two New York publishers' sensational coverage of Cuba became known as yellow journalism?

Pulitzer and Hearst: the name came from the Yellow Kid, a comic-strip character the two papers fought over in their circulation war, and it stuck to their lurid Cuba headlines.

Where does the mainmast of the battleship Maine now stand as a memorial?

Arlington Cemetery: Army engineers raised the wreck from the harbour floor in 1910–12, and her mast now rises over the graves of about 230 of her crew, set on a base shaped like a gun turret.

What did the US Navy's 1898 inquiry blame for the explosion that sank the Maine?

A mine under the hull: the court named no culprit, but many Americans blamed Spain; later studies, including one for Admiral Rickover in 1974, pointed instead to a coal fire inside the ship.

How did the popular American slogan that began 'Remember the Maine' end?

To Hell with Spain! The rhyme became the war party's rallying cry, though the Navy's inquiry never said who had destroyed the ship.

What name, taken from a British music-hall song, was given to Americans clamouring for war with Spain in 1898?

Jingoes: the word came from an 1878 London song vowing to fight Russia 'by jingo', and twenty years later even Spain's ambassador was sneering at the jingoes in Washington.

Which measure in the 1898 war resolution renounced any American claim to Cuba?

The Teller Amendment: named for Colorado senator Henry Teller, it promised to leave the island to its people once Spain was gone, which is why Cuba never became an American possession like the war's other prizes.

From which Florida port did the US Army's invasion force sail for Cuba in June 1898?

Tampa: tens of thousands of soldiers crowded into the small town, and when the transports finally sailed there was room aboard for only part of the army.

Which assistant secretary of the navy ordered Dewey's squadron to Hong Kong ahead of the war?

Theodore Roosevelt: he liked to make policy whenever the Navy Secretary stepped out, and one such afternoon he cabled the Asiatic Squadron to fill its coal bunkers and be ready to strike.

Commodore George Dewey destroyed a Spanish squadron on 1 May 1898 in the harbour of which city?

His flagship was USS Olympia and he lost no men, with only nine wounded.

Which European power sent a squadron to shadow Dewey's fleet in the Philippines, raising fears it wanted the islands?

Germany: Admiral von Diederichs arrived six weeks after the battle, and the fear that Berlin or another power would seize the islands became a leading argument for the United States keeping them.

Which Filipino leader did Dewey bring back from exile in Hong Kong to rally rebels against Spain?

Emilio Aguinaldo: he declared independence within weeks of landing, but when the Americans kept the islands he turned his army against them and fought on until his capture in 1901.

Which Pacific island group did the United States annex in July 1898, in the middle of its war with Spain?

Hawaii: annexation had stalled for years, but once ships and troops were crossing the Pacific to fight, Congress pushed it through by joint resolution as a stepping stone to Asia.

US troops stormed the Philippine capital on 13 August 1898, unaware of what news from Washington?

A ceasefire had been signed: the peace protocol was agreed the day before, but the news had not crossed the Pacific, and shutting the Filipino army out of the captured city sowed the seeds of the next war.

Which rifle gave Spanish troops in Cuba an edge over the Americans in 1898?

Mauser: it fired smokeless powder, so Spanish riflemen gave off no telltale puff of smoke and were almost impossible to spot.

Where did a battalion of US Marines land in Cuba in June 1898?

Guantánamo Bay: the Marines seized it as a sheltered coaling station for the blockading fleet, and the United States has kept a naval base there under a lease dating from 1903.

Joseph Wheeler led US cavalry in Cuba in 1898, three decades after commanding cavalry in which army?

Confederate army: he was a Southern major general at 26, spent years in Congress working to heal the breach between North and South, then volunteered at 61 for the war in Cuba.

Which American novelist came under fire with US Marines in Cuba as a newspaper correspondent in 1898?

Stephen Crane: he had written The Red Badge of Courage, his Civil War classic, without ever seeing a battle, and Cuba showed him the real thing two years before tuberculosis killed him.

The 1st US Volunteer Cavalry of 1898 was popularly known as what?

The Rough Riders: the regiment mixed frontiersmen with Ivy League athletes, and although it was raised as cavalry its troopers made their famous charge in Cuba on foot.

The cavalry charge of 1 July 1898 remembered as San Juan Hill was actually made up which smaller rise beside it?

Kettle Hill: the dismounted troopers, Black regulars among them, took it first, while the infantry stormed the larger ridge beside it that gave the battle its name.

What weapon's supporting fire was described as critical to the success of the assault on San Juan Hill?

Gatling guns: when the drumming began, men on the slope feared Spanish machine guns, until an officer leapt up shouting 'It's the Gatlings, men, our Gatlings!' as Lieutenant Parker pushed his guns forward.

Which future general fought at San Juan Hill as a lieutenant in the 10th Cavalry?

John J. Pershing: his nickname 'Black Jack' is usually traced to his service with this Black regiment, and it followed him all the way to command of the American army in France in 1917.

Lieutenant Richmond Hobson became a hero in 1898 by deliberately sinking his own ship to do what?

Bottle up the Spanish fleet: gunfire wrecked the old collier's steering and she sank where she blocked nothing, yet Hobson came home from a Spanish prison an overnight celebrity.

Admiral Cervera's Spanish squadron was destroyed in July 1898 as it tried to break out of which Cuban harbour?

Santiago: following orders he thought hopeless, Cervera led his ships out past the waiting American fleet, lost every one of them and was taken prisoner, yet his courage made him a hero even to his captors.

Which battleship's 14,000-mile dash to join the fleet in 1898 made the case for a Panama canal?

USS Oregon: she left San Francisco, rounded South America and reached Florida about two months later ready for battle, and the long detour became the standing argument for cutting a canal through Central America.

Which future American poet served as a soldier in the 1898 invasion of Puerto Rico?

Carl Sandburg: he volunteered at 20 and served in Puerto Rico, then went home to Illinois and enrolled at college, the start of his life as a writer.

Which 1899 poem by Rudyard Kipling urged Americans to take up colonial rule in the Philippines?

The White Man's Burden: it appeared in American newspapers days before the Senate voted on the peace treaty, which then scraped through with a single vote to spare.

The Spanish-American War was formally ended by a treaty signed in December 1898 in which city?

Paris: the American commissioners bargained there for two months in a capital largely sympathetic to Spain, and the hardest fight was over who would keep the Philippines.

Which famous American author joined the Anti-Imperialist League and attacked the annexation of the Philippines?

Mark Twain: he had cheered the war to free Cuba, then turned against what followed, serving as the League's vice-president and writing bitter satires on the conquest of the islands.

Which US Army doctor led the board in occupied Cuba that proved in 1900 that mosquitoes spread yellow fever?

Walter Reed: his board ran its experiments on human volunteers and lost one of its own members, Jesse Lazear, to the disease before the case was proved.

Which 1901 measure, written into Cuba's constitution, let the United States intervene in the island's affairs?

The Platt Amendment: Cubans had to accept it as the price of ending the American occupation, and it stayed in force until 1934.

Which disease killed far more American soldiers than combat in the 1898 war, mostly in camps at home?

Typhoid fever: it raged through the crowded training camps before most volunteers ever left the country, and the Army set up a special board whose findings reshaped camp sanitation.

Which US diplomat famously called the 1898 conflict with Spain 'a splendid little war'?

John Hay: once Abraham Lincoln's young private secretary, he coined the phrase as ambassador in London, and within weeks he was called home to become Secretary of State.

The best-known hero of San Juan Hill won which office in November 1898, three months after coming home?

Governor of New York: the colonel proved so hard to control that the state's Republican boss had him put on the 1900 ticket as vice-president to be rid of him, and an assassin's bullet then made him president.

Which Democrat lost the 1900 presidential election after campaigning against an American overseas empire?

William Jennings Bryan: he had backed the war to free Cuba and served as a volunteer colonel, then ran against keeping its spoils and lost to the president who had won it.

Which American in her seventies went to Cuba in 1898 to run relief work and nurse wounded soldiers?

Clara Barton: she had carried supplies to the wounded in the Civil War and then founded the American Red Cross, which she led to the Cuban front herself.

Which rum cocktail takes its name from the Cuban village where the US Army landed in June 1898?

Daiquiri: some 16,000 soldiers waded ashore at the village of Daiquirí, and by about 1910 a rum company's advertisements were using the name for the local mix of rum, lime and sugar.

The US Navy gunboat Gloucester, which fought in the war of 1898, had been which tycoon's private yacht?

J. P. Morgan: the Navy bought his yacht Corsair as war began and gave her to Richard Wainwright, second in command of the Maine when she blew up, and under him she helped destroy the Spanish squadron in Cuba.

Which future British prime minister first came under fire in Cuba in 1895, as an observer with Spanish troops?

Winston Churchill: a 21-year-old cavalry officer on leave, he rode with a Spanish column and wrote home that he had 'heard enough bullets whistle and hum past to satisfy me for some time to come'.

What did the US Army send up over its troops at San Juan Hill, only to draw Spanish fire onto them?

A balloon: army observers went up in it to scout the Spanish positions, but it made a perfect target and drew enemy fire onto the men waiting below.

At Cienfuegos in May 1898, American sailors rowed in under fire to cut what?

Telegraph cables: they dragged the undersea lines up from the seabed and sawed through two of them with hacksaws under fire from the shore, and every man in the boats was awarded the Medal of Honor.

How did US agents try to stop Admiral Cámara's squadron from steaming on to the Philippines?

Bought up all the local coal: Britain also barred him from refuelling in Egyptian waters, yet the squadron got through the canal, only to be called home days later after Spain's Caribbean fleet was destroyed.

Midway through wrecking Spain's Pacific squadron in May 1898, George Dewey pulled back and ordered what for his crews?

Breakfast followed a scare: a garbled report said the guns were nearly out of shells, and the pause showed only fifteen rounds apiece had been fired.

Which Wild West sharpshooter wrote to the president in April 1898 offering fifty women marksmen for a war with Spain?

Annie Oakley promised that her recruits would bring their own guns and ammunition, but the government never accepted the offer.

Which millionaire, later the richest passenger lost on the Titanic, funded his own artillery battery in 1898?

John Jacob Astor paid for the Astor Battery, which served in the Philippines, while he himself went to Cuba as a staff officer.

Which industrialist offered $20 million of his own money so Filipinos could buy their independence after 1898?

Andrew Carnegie's offer matched the sum the United States had just paid Spain for the islands, whose annexation he bitterly opposed.

Whose remains did Spain carry home to Seville Cathedral after losing Cuba in the war of 1898?

Christopher Columbus had lain in the Caribbean for centuries, and Santo Domingo still claims to hold his bones, which have never been DNA-tested there.

The 1898 war with Spain was the first American conflict covered using which recent invention?

Movie camera crews struggled to film real fighting, so vaudeville audiences were shown re-enactments staged with model ships and cigar smoke.

How did most of the 1st US Volunteer Cavalry go into battle in Cuba in 1898 after a chaotic embarkation?

On foot, as light infantry: in the scramble to embark, most of the regiment's horses and mules were left behind in Florida.

Which decoration was awarded in 2001, a century late, to the officer who led the famous 1898 charge at San Juan Hill?

Medal of Honor nominations made by his commanders in 1898 went nowhere, and the award finally came from Bill Clinton, 82 years after the officer's death.

Which nickname belonged to the Black regular troops who stormed San Juan Hill in 1898?

Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry climbed the slope so close beside the volunteers that the units became intermingled before the top.

On which symbolic date in 1946 did the United States finally recognise the independence of the Philippines?

July 4 did not last as the national holiday: since 1962 the Philippines has marked Independence Day on June 12, the date of its 1898 declaration against Spain.

What did the Jones Act of 1917 grant to Puerto Ricans, who had lived under American rule since 1898?

US citizenship let islanders move freely to the mainland, and the act set off a wave of migration, to New York above all.

Which future US president became the first American civilian governor of the Philippines in 1901?

William Taft had been hoping for a Supreme Court seat instead; he finally got one twenty years later, as chief justice.

Which Second World War general's father commanded a brigade in the Philippines during the 1898 war with Spain?

Douglas MacArthur's father went on to be military governor of the islands, which his son would defend and retake four decades later.

To which Florida city was much of the US North Atlantic Squadron moved as war loomed in 1898?

Key West had been Florida's largest city a decade earlier, and some of the sailors killed aboard the battleship Maine lie buried in its cemetery.

What nickname did the US Army's commanding general give the foul-smelling rations issued to his troops in 1898?

Embalmed beef was how he described it to a court of inquiry, where an army doctor compared the smell to a body injected with formaldehyde.

USS Vesuvius bombarded Cuban defences in 1898 with shells thrown by compressed air from weapons known as what?

Dynamite guns made so little noise that their huge shells landed without the warning roar of a bombardment, which badly rattled the defenders.

Which painter of the American West, sent to Cuba by a New York paper in 1897, reportedly cabled that all was quiet?

Frederic Remington's publisher supposedly replied that he should supply the pictures and the paper would supply the war, an exchange now thought to be apocryphal.

At a hotel bar in which Texas city were recruits famously gathered for the 1st US Volunteer Cavalry in 1898?

San Antonio's Menger Hotel bar became the best-known gathering point for a regiment that mixed cowboys and prospectors with Ivy League athletes.

Which army doctor, physician to two presidents, commanded the 1st US Volunteer Cavalry at the start of the 1898 war?

Leonard Wood had campaigned against Geronimo in 1886, and after the fighting he stayed on in Cuba, rising to be the island's military governor.

Which cruiser, George Dewey's flagship in 1898, survives today as a museum ship on the Philadelphia waterfront?

USS Olympia also carried the body of America's Unknown Soldier home from Europe in 1921, a year before she was finally retired.

To which captain did George Dewey address his famous order to open fire when ready on 1 May 1898?

Charles Gridley fought the battle gravely ill inside a sweltering conning tower and died in Japan five weeks later on his way home.

George Dewey is the only American officer ever to hold which rank, created for him after his victory of 1898?

Admiral of the Navy made Dewey the highest-ranking officer in the service's history, senior even to the five-star admirals of the Second World War.

Which boy king, monarch from the moment of his birth, sat on Spain's throne during the war of 1898?

Alfonso XIII was born months after his father died, so his Austrian mother ruled as regent until he turned sixteen in 1902.

Which 1899 Elbert Hubbard essay turned an army lieutenant's secret 1898 errand into a lesson in initiative?

A Message to Garcia began as untitled filler in Hubbard's own magazine, then was reprinted hundreds of thousands of times as a railroad pamphlet.

Where on Long Island were American troops returning from Cuba in 1898 held in quarantine at Camp Wikoff?

Montauk hosted the 1st US Volunteer Cavalry among others, and a county park on the site was for a time named after the regiment's famous colonel.

Which US Army commanding general, who had taken Geronimo's surrender, led the 1898 invasion of Puerto Rico?

Nelson Miles landed at Guánica on the south coast and campaigned for less than three weeks before the armistice stopped his advance.

Which 300-pound general, laid low by gout, commanded the American army that landed in Cuba in June 1898?

William Shafter had been nicknamed Pecos Bill on the frontier, and his bulk and poor health kept him at headquarters, well behind the front.

Which commodore was senior officer present when Cervera's squadron was destroyed in 1898, his admiral being away?

Winfield Schley was hailed by the public as the hero of the fight, starting a feud with Admiral Sampson's camp that reached a court of inquiry in 1901.

Which US naval officer won world fame as a strategist with his 1890 book The Influence of Sea Power upon History?

Alfred Thayer Mahan had retired two years before the fighting, but he was called back to duty in 1898 to advise on naval strategy against Spain.

Which two-word phrase names the policy toward the Philippines set out in a presidential proclamation of December 1898?

Benevolent assimilation was toned down by the American commander in the islands, who cut the references to US sovereignty before sending it to Filipino leaders.

Which permanent branch of the US military, created in 1901, grew out of the civilian women hired to tend troops in 1898?

Army Nurse Corps status came with the Army Reorganization Act; during the fighting three years earlier the service had simply hired civilian women.

Which neutral country's ambassador signed the 1898 armistice on behalf of the Spanish government?

France's Jules Cambon went on to help shape the final peace treaty, and four years later he was posted to Madrid as ambassador.

At which Cuban village did some 600 Spanish defenders hold off an American division for twelve hours in 1898?

El Caney's garrison fought until its ammunition ran out, keeping thousands of Americans from joining the assault on San Juan Hill the same day.

Which uninhabited Pacific atoll, halfway between Honolulu and the Philippines, did the United States claim in 1899?

Wake Island was wanted as a refuelling stop for warships on the long haul to Asia, and Japan seized it in December 1941.

Which secretary of war, later a Nobel Peace Prize winner, gave the US Army a general staff in the years after 1898?

Elihu Root also founded the Army War College, and his Nobel came in 1912 for promoting arbitration between nations.

Which 1854 document urged the United States to buy Cuba from Spain and hinted at war if the offer was refused?

Ostend Manifesto was the name given to a dispatch by three American envoys who met secretly in Belgium; it was denounced as soon as it leaked.

What title does Theo Kitson's bronze statue of an 1898 infantryman bear, cast at least fifty times for American towns?

The Hiker takes its name from the word that American soldiers of the Cuban and Philippine campaigns used for themselves.

Which office did George Dewey briefly seek in 1900 on the strength of his fame from the war with Spain?

The presidency would be easy, Dewey told reporters, since it only meant carrying out the laws of Congress; he also admitted he had never voted, and soon withdrew.

Which Filipino novelist and eye doctor did Spain execute for rebellion in 1896, two years before losing the islands?

José Rizal had argued for self-government through peaceful reform, not revolution, yet his novels inspired the rebels who rose against Spain.

The 1st US Volunteer Cavalry of 1898 kept three mascots: a dog named Cuba, an eagle, and Josephine, who was what?

A mountain lion was the gift of the regiment's Arizona troopers, while the eagle came with the men from New Mexico.

By what name was the American naval force in the Far East known when George Dewey led it into battle in 1898?

Asiatic Squadron ships, four cruisers, two gunboats and a revenue cutter, set out for the fight from Mirs Bay on the Chinese coast.

Under which Union admiral did the young George Dewey serve at the capture of New Orleans in 1862?

David Farragut thought so well of the young lieutenant that he made him executive officer of the gunboat he used for his own scouting.

Which celebrity reporter, a friend of its lieutenant colonel, helped create the legend of the 1st US Volunteer Cavalry?

Richard Harding Davis was made an honorary member of the regiment, and his writing gave its second-in-command a lasting boost in politics.

Which secretary of war was blamed for the US Army's supply failures in 1898 and forced to resign a year later?

Russell Alger's name gave the language Algerism, a byword for official bungling, yet Michigan later sent him to the Senate.

In which jungle skirmish of 24 June 1898 did the 1st US Volunteer Cavalry first come under fire in Cuba?

Las Guásimas was a Spanish rearguard action, fought to slow the columns pushing inland from the landing beaches under Joseph Wheeler.

Which former exile, once a teacher in New York State, became the first president of an independent Cuba in 1902?

Tomás Estrada Palma had spent years of exile teaching in Orange County, New York, while drumming up American sympathy for the rebels.

Which Cuban export's markets had American businessmen come to dominate in the decades before the war of 1898?

Sugar markets in Cuba were snapped up cheaply by US businessmen once an earlier independence struggle had left prices devalued.

Which ensign, killed off Cuba in May 1898, was the only US naval officer to die in action against Spain?

Worth Bagley died when a shell struck the disabled torpedo boat Winslow just as the fight was ending, and four later US Navy warships were named Bagley.

Which 1900 law replaced military rule in Puerto Rico with a civil government under American control?

Foraker Act government was modelled on the federal one in Washington, but the law also put tariffs on goods shipped from the island to the mainland.

George Dewey, the naval hero of 1898, was born opposite the state house in the capital of which New England state?

Vermont's capital, Montpelier, was his birthplace, and his father helped to found the National Life Insurance Company there.