The Remember the Maine-Scented Candle is a great way to remember the Maine, if your other strategies for remembering the Maine aren't currently working.
The USS Maine was a U.S. warship that mysteriously blew up in 1898 while anchored off the coast of Cuba. At the time, Cuba was still part of the Spanish Empire, and America blamed the explosion on a Spanish mine. (The Spaniards argued that shoddy American ship design, construction, and operation were responsible. But surprisingly, we did not find this argument persuasive!)
U.S. anger over the sinking of the Maine helped lead to the Spanish-American war, which in turn led to Cuban independence from Spain, and to Cuba and the United States being best friends forever.*
To this day, no one really knows what caused the explosion. Spain had good reasons to sink a U.S. warship anchored in their harbor, but a coal bunker on a 19th-century ship has good reasons to spontaneously ignite.
The Remember the Maine-Scented Candle recreates in shocking and extraordinary detail what the actual USS Maine was like. Yes, it had swiveling cannon turrets that could fire across the deck. (Yikes!) Yes, it was yellow. Yes, it was, as it turns out, highly flammable. But no, it didn’t really smell like a mojito. (We have to make some concessions to commerce.)
