The Shortest and Longest Wars in History

This is crazy... I have just learnt that there was a war in 1896 that lasted... wait-for-it... just 38 minutes!
It was between United Kingdom and the Zanzibar Sultanate and everything happened in the morning of August, 27, 1896.

Even if it lasted just 38 minutes (09:02-09:40 AM), there were about 500 causalities from the Zanzibar forces and only one British sailor was injured. As you can guess from this numbers, Zanzibar surrendered.

If you want to read more on this subject, here is the wikipedia link.

For the record, the longest war was the Hundred Years War between Kingdom of England and Kingdom of France. It was a series of conflicts for the control of the French throne and it went from 1337 to 1453. It is called the Hundred Years War even if it lasted 116 years.

Actually from the formal point of view there has been an even longer war the Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War between The Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly (located off the SW southwest coast of Great Britain), but this war was just a theoretical warfare. Yes,  there is such a thing.
This bloodless conflict lasted from 1651 to 1986.



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