On March 7, 1971, more than a thousand US planes engaged in bombing missions, along with combat missions involving hundreds of helicopters, in a war that was supposed to be nearly over, in a battle intended to prove that the US was no longer needed. Operation Lam Son 719 is both little remembered and little understood, but might well have represented a final turning point in the American war in Vietnam.
The Reconquista, or Christian reconquest of Iberia, took nearly 800 years. The fighting did not come without great attempts by Muslim powers across the strait trying to reestablish their presence in mainland Europe. The last gasp of that effort came in the 1330s, when the powerful Marinid sultanate of what is modern Morocco invaded in an attempt to reverse Christian gains and secure the perilous position of the Sultanate of Granada.