5 MARCH

1899 - A band of Filipinos fire on some crew members of the imperialist United States gunboat U.S.S. Bennington one month into the Philippine-American War (1899-1914);  the incident is supposed to give Washington the impression that their invading forces are getting nervous and restless under the "harassment"  of the patriots of the fledgling Philippine Republic; the Phil-Am War began on February 4, 1899 under the provocation of the Bald Eagle forces under the US President William McKinley's vile pre-arranged plan to precipitate a war and thereby trick their Senate to approve the December 1898 Treaty of Paris and thus secure funding for military operations to annex the  Southeast Asian archipelago (in context, along with Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guano islands, American Samoa, and other islands in the Pacific).



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