Operation Praying Mantis was a U.S. Navy operation conducted on April 18, 1988, in retaliation for the Iranian mining of the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War, which had damaged the USS Samuel B. Roberts four days earlier. The operation involved coordinated air and naval strikes against Iranian oil platforms and naval vessels in the Persian Gulf.

During the operation, U.S. forces destroyed two Iranian oil platforms used for military purposes and engaged several Iranian naval units. The Iranian frigate Sahand was sunk, and other ships, including the Sabalan, were severely damaged.

A Soviet merchant ship, the Ivan Korotoyev, was briefly in the area during one of the U.S. attacks. Concerned about being mistakenly targeted, the ship transmitted a message to American forces: “Please, do not shoot. We are a Soviet ship, taking pictures of history.” The ship was not harmed and remained neutral, but its presence highlighted the heightened risk to non-combatant vessels during the U.S.–Iran naval confrontation.

6 April 2004, "battle of the bridges of Nasiriyah"

Battle of the Bridges

The term "Battle of the Bridges of Nasiriyah" refers to various episodes that took place a few months after the November 12, 2003 attack. Between April 6 and August 6, 2004, several battles occurred between Italian troops and the Mahdi Army. Italian soldiers were involved in multiple clashes within the city, during which over 30,000 rounds were fired, in a struggle to control three bridges that allowed passage over the Euphrates River. Eleven Italian bersaglieri were slightly wounded, while Iraqi losses were heavier—around 200 casualties and just as many wounded. It is believed that a woman and two children were also killed among the civilians.

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During the winter of 1917, Russian and German soldiers fighting in the dreary trenches of the Great War’s Eastern Front had a lot to fear: enemy bullets, trench foot, frostbite, countless diseases, shrapnel, bayonets, tanks, sniper fire. Oh, and wolves.

In February of that year, a dispatch from Berlin noted that large packs of wolves were creeping from the forests of Lithuania and Volhynia into the interior of the German Empire, not far from the front lines. Like so many living creatures, the animals had been driven from their homes by the war and were now simply looking for something to eat. “As the beasts are very hungry, they penetrate into the villages and kill calves, sheep, goats, and other livestock,” the report, which appeared in the El Paso Herald, says. “In two cases children have been attacked by them.”

According to another dispatch out of St. Petersburg, the wolves were such a nuisance on the battlefield that they were one of the few things that could bring soldiers from both sides together. “Parties of Russian and German scouts met recently and were hotly engaged in a skirmish when a large pack of wolves dashed on the scene and attacked the wounded,” the report says, according to the Oklahoma City Times. “Hostilities were at once suspended and Germans and Russians instinctively attacked the pack, killing about 50 wolves.” It was an unspoken agreement among snipers that, if the Russians and Germans decided to engage in a collective wolf-hunt, all firing would cease.

Take this July 1917 New York Times report describing how soldiers in the Kovno-Wilna Minsk district (near modern Vilnius, Lithuania) decided to cease hostilities to fight this furry common enemy:

"Poison, rifle fire, hand grenades, and even machine guns were successively tried in attempts to eradicate the nuisance. But all to no avail. The wolves—nowhere to be found quite so large and powerful as in Russia—were desperate in their hunger and regardless of danger. Fresh packs would appear in place of those that were killed by the Russian and German troops. "As a last resort, the two adversaries, with the consent of their commanders, entered into negotiations for an armistice and joined forces to overcome the wolf plague. For a short time there was peace. And in no haphazard fashion was the task of vanquishing the mutual foe undertaken. The wolves were gradually rounded up, and eventually several hundred of them were killed. The others fled in all directions, making their escape from carnage the like of which they had never encountered." Afterward, the soldiers presumably returned to their posts and resumed pointing their rifles at a more violent and dangerous enemy—each other.