Some more facts...this time about the aptly-named Pig War.
Way back during the 19th century, the Kingdom of Spain, the Russian Empire, the UK and the US had conflicting claims in a territory which now encompasses the Northwestern US and British Columbia. Spain and Russia later dropped out of the picture, eventually leaving the US and the UK to sign a treaty in 1846 setting the boundary "along the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island, and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel, and of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, to the Pacific Ocean." The problem was that there were two channels that fit the description. One was Haro Strait, which was nearer to modern-day Canada, and the other was Rosario Strait, which was nearer to the US. In the middle was the San Juan islands, which both sides claimed.
Meanwhile, by 1853 the Hudson's Bay Company set up a sheep farming operations in the islands, while American settlers also started arriving by the dozen. Disputes came next, and then a pig was shot in June 15, 1859 by an American farmer named Lyman Cutlar, incensed by the pig's eating of his tubers. As it turned out, an Irishman employed by the HBC owned the pig. Informal negotiations between the two ensued, but quickly broke down. Things went south from there.
British authorities wanted Mr. Cutlar arrested, which led his fellow settlers to ask for military protection. Brig. Gen. William S. Harney quickly responded by landing on the islands, which the British responded in kind by sending in ships. In a matter of months, the forces kept growing until the governor of the Vancouver Island colony told the Rear Adm. R. Lambert Baynes, commander of the British naval forces in the east Pacific, to engage the Americans in combat. He did not, befuddled why he would be " involved in two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig." The American and British forces exchanged insults, but did not fire, lest one of them be accused of being the aggressor nation.
When the higher-ups heard of the events in the San Juan Islands, they quickly resolved to end the crisis ASAP. President James Buchanan sent General Winfield Scott to help with the matter. Heads started to cool, and 12 years later, after a period of joint occupation by both countries, an international arbitration commission decided that the referred channel in the treaty was the Haro Strait, thereby handing over the islands to the Americans. Thus ends the epic saga of a war started by a pig.