Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, February 16, 1804, I'm going to paint a picture for you here.

Roughly 70 U.S. Marines staged a night raid on an American ship to the U.S.S.

Philadelphia. The ship had been captured by enemy forces so the plan

was to board the ship and burn it down. Under the cover of moonlight these 70 U.S. Marines

managed to distract the people guarding the ship, sneak aboard, and do just that, a successful daring night mission, the US at war.

And if you're thinking to yourself, wait a minute, 1804 a war, it's not the Revolutionary War, it's not the war of 1812,

we know when that happened, there's a Navy ship involved, so this is probably not part of the Indian

Territory Wars.

This is of course folks from the first Barbary war and it took place

off the coast of Tripoli in the Mediterranean and our main ally was Sweden.

All of these things were very surprising to me at least so let's discuss here as always is

Nicole Hammer of Columbia hello nicky hello jody and Kelly Carter Jackson of

Wellesley is here as well hello Kelly hey there so yes to me we're at war and our main ally is Sweden and we're in Tripoli.

All of these things as I said were a little surprising to me so Kelly start to inform me and

our audience what are we doing over there?

Sure so the first barber where pretty much takes place between 1801 and 1805

and the United States in Sweden are fighting against four North African states,

collectively known as the Barbary states.

So today we would know this as Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.

But what most people don't realize is that during this time

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