I don’t think they cared who owned the land at the time of the “invasion”, just that British troops/vessels/planes attacked someone in the land currently part of the modern-day country, At least that’s how I interpret what the list represents. So Canada would definitely count, ya know, the whole Plains of Abraham and all that.
That would no doubt be why Guatemala is on the not-invaded on the list despite the Belize thing.
Yes, but what happens when they invade Luxembourg and then someone belatedly looks up the NATO Treaty and discovers that Luxembourg is one of their allies? The Treaty collapses as does the EU, generating a worldwide depression. All die. Oh the embarassment!
I do wonder about the US list. Would it be shorter to list countries attacked by the US or those not attacked?
D’oh! Misread this as the list of countries that the British *have *invaded. Obviously, I was mistaken and it is a short list of countries that were *not *invaded by the British.
Thailand is the only country of Southeast Asia that wasn’t colonized by a European power. Siam did lose chunks of its original territory to Britain and France, however. Japan invaded the country in 1941, as the result of which Thailand eventually became an ally of Japan during the war.
The map shows he carefully avoided Switzerland. He wouldn’t have come out alive. However we remember him in a ditty:
Malbrough s´en va-t-en guerre,
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,
Malbrough s´en va-t-en guerre,
Ne sais quand reviendra.
etc.
As for the bombings, it was an error caused by bad weather. And it wasn’t the British (They never make mistakes :dubious:).
Quote:
“At the insistence of the Swiss government for an explanation, Allied investigations into the incident found that bad weather broke up the American formation over France, and that high winds that nearly doubled the ground speed of the bombers confused the navigators.” Wiki
According to the official website of the Canton of Basel-Country, on December 17th 1940, RAF planes dropped 50 bombs on the town of Binningen. 3 local women were killed.
The American air attacks on Switzerland during WW II are more widely known, though, and it has been argued that these bombing raids may not have been conducted by mistake (at least not all of them).
Siam changed its name to Thailand in large part due to the efforts of Major-General Luang Wichitwathakan, who began campaigning for the name change after being presented a map produced by the Ecole Francaise d’Extrene Orient showing the Thai race inhabiting Siam, Burma, Southeast Asia and southern China. The map led him to believe there were 60 million Thais in southern China and Southeast Asia – including many in northern Vietnam – at the time, and through his personal crusade as both a historian and a politician, he managed to get the name changed to Thailand as sort of a homeland for the Thai peoples.
The name was changed in June 1939, changed back to Siam at the end of World War II, then back again to Thailand in 1949, and this time it stuck.
It certainly was invaded by Japan though, and successfully. Not to mention the Burmese invasions over the years. But it’s a common misconception that “Thai” means “free.”
