Any nominations other than Vietnam?
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
As a 10 year old, getting up in the morning and watching the BBC Coverage of the 1991 Gulf War was pretty exciting. Patriot missiles intercepting scuds, pictures of cruise missiles flying low level before missing their targets. Gripping stuff. -
Which international upset thrilled you the most?
I'm not sure that qualifies as an upset, Rob.
Anyway, for me, probably, the fall of the Berlin Wall.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Thermopylae.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Er, yeah. I really should learn to read the titles more often. Move on, nothing to see here...Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Heh. Someone's going to say the Six Day War in a bit, and this thread will ex-plode.
Before that happens, I've always liked the Italians having their arse handed to them by Ethiopia at the battle of Adowa in 1896. Although the Italians did bring rinderpest with them, which perhaps levels the score up a bit.
More recently, Cuito Cuanavale in Angola.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Alexander's defeat of the Persian empire has to rank as one of history's biggest upsets.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Shouldn't this be the War Porn thread?
Anyway, plucky English bowmen see off heavily armed French knights 6-0 at Agincourt. Take that, you froggy bastards!Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
The day an under-pressure FW de Klerk allowed an anti-apartheid march to take place would be my choice, had it not been a local event.
So I'll go with the rise of Solidarność in early '80s Poland. We didn't know that Walesa would turn out to be a bit of a dick, but at the time it was thrilling stuff.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
For all that thermopylae, agincourt, trafalgar and the rest were good wins for underdogs, I can't really say they excited me, as such. A little before my time, all of them.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
End of apartheid wins in the modern era, surely
Also:
Bay of PigsComment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Well, if we can't have before our time, I'll go for those mercenaries getting lynched in Fallujah.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Hang on a minute, how was Thermopylae an upset? The plucky underdogs put up a good fight, sure, but at the end of the day they still couldn't match the Persians' strength in depth. Unless we're including Salamis as part of Thermopylae now.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
End of apartheid wins in the modern era, surely
Equalled or surpassed by the Soviet Union going belly up.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
The IDF making a total balls of invading south Lebanon in 2006 was a timely reminder that their well-funded war machine was not as all-conquering as Israel's hawks fondly imagined.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Yeah, I agree with that. And that both happened at more or less the same time was even more thrilling.
I wonder how much events in Bejing in June '89 influenced the speed with which apartheid and the Eastern bloc disintegrated.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Does "international" imply some conflict between nations, or just that it happened abroad? If the latter, then the final bloodless defeat of fascism in Spain and Portugal probably belongs with the end of apartheid and the collapse of Stalinism's grip on Eastern Europe, in the "sometimes the right side wins" category.
If we're on about surprising defeats of mighty armies, though, then I think things get trickier. In my lifetime at least, such reverses have ended up so bloody for all concerned that it's hard to wring a sense of triumph from all the carnage. Vietnam, for example: what a price was paid there.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
The Soviet Union was a funny one though wasn't it - like people pushing against an edifice that they thought was made of iron but was actually made of paper. People pour over a border and a wall and suddenly, bingo, game over. And almost no one on any part of the political spectrum predicted it.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Yeah, Thermopylae was a noble loss, not an upset win.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
21 November 2007, Croatia sending England home to pack, on their own home turf.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Hmmm. I mean, McClaren lost his job over it, but I don't think anyone got hurt or killed.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Not sure it was a source for pleasure but some incredibly small number of Spanish chancers overthrew the whole Inca empire.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Didn't syphilis, measles and other 'European' diseases have a major effect there?
The fall of Iceland was thrilling, if not pleasant. I'd long forgiven the Windsor thrashing in 2006.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Finland's initial successes in the Winter War against the USSR were very impressive.Comment
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Which international upset thrilled you the most?
Thermopylae haters - I'm sure it was jolly upsetting for the loved ones of the deceased.Comment
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