← Back to the front page

A Prank Led to America’s First Nominated Female to Office, and Other Lesser Known American History Facts

Khalid Elhassan December 13, 2019 33 min

23. The Drunk Irishman Who Bombed America

Tensions eased along the US-Mexican border after the Battle of Ambos Nogales, in no small part because the Mexican Revolution, whose spillover risks kept Mexico’s northern neighbor jittery, had ended. Then things worsened again in 1929, when a Mexican rebellion led to fighting between competing factions just across the border from the US. Things escalated, spilled over, and by the time the dust settled down, America had experienced its first aerial bombing.

America has been attacked from the air a few times, with Pearl Harbor and 9/11 being the best-known instances. However, America suffered its first aerial bombing in 1929, at the town of Naco, Arizona. Fighting in Mexico spilled over across the border, and a possibly drunk mercenary pilot, an Irishman named Patrick Murphy, was hired to bomb Mexican forces. He ended up bombing an American town instead.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.