There has always been a mystery about who was responsible for sinking the Maine, which was of course the excuse for the US to invade Cuba, The Phillipines and other Spanish possessions. Cubans today compare the 1898 event with the 1962 US plot, Operation Northwoods, whcih included blowing up an American ship in Guantanamo Bay, as a pretext for invading Cuba once again. http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662&page=1.
Echoes of the Gulf of Tonkin incident which provided the excuse for the full scale, tragic invation of Vietnam.