The Poplar Tree Incident

Or the Axe Murder Incident  if you don't mind knowing in advance how it ended. Out of all the various August 18th anniversaries, today I'm noting this skirmish on the Military Demarcation Line between North and South Korea in 1976.

An unruly poplar tree was obscuring the view from a United Nations Command observation post. A US-led South Korean gardening expedition was sent out to trim a few branches. A party of North Korean guards interrupted them, saying that the tree had been planted personally by the Great Leader Kim Il Sung and should not be touched. The UNC party carried on with their pruning, and were attacked by the North Korean guards. In the ensuing fight some axes were dropped by the UNC party, and these were used to kill the two American officers who led the expedition. The rest escaped back over the Bridge of No Return.

The UN, with swift (and Swiftian) resolve, in response mounted "Operation Paul Bunyan", Paul Bunyan being a North American folk legend: a giant lumberjack. Some of the childhood myths surrounding Paul Bunyan might have resonated with the Great Leader's fans across the border: as a baby it took three storks to bring him to his parents instead of the usual one; and when he first learned to clap he did it with such force that the shockwaves broke all the windows in the house. Operation Paul Bunyan used an overwhelming force of over 800 men, with assorted automatic weapons, vehicles and air support, to chop the tree down once and for all.

History xls: the history of the world in a spreadsheet