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Spanish-American War, newspapers used the Maine to stir up circulation and push the narrative that it was blown up. When it the true was it probable exploded due to fire in the coal bunker.
Most examples you can come up were cases with existing tensions that were just waiting for the final nail in the coffin. America and Spain had been enemies for 100 years. One of the key points I make in my book is that America inherited the Anglo-Saxon hatred of Spain, and the American people - far more than the government - were always looking for ways to stick it to Spain.
The way I put it was something like this: Francis Drake started filibusters against Spanish territory in the 1500s, they continued in America in the following cases:
1804-5: Kemper Revolt in West Florida
1806: Miranda Expedition against Venezuela; Burr Expedition against Mexico
1810: West Florida Revolt
1812: Filibuster in East Florida; Gutierrez-Magee Expedition into Texas (my book)
1815: Mina/Aury Expedition against Northern Mexico
1817: MacGregor filibuster against Amelia Island (Florida)
1818: Andrew Jackson seizes Pensacola (the only one so far authorized or approved by the US government)
1819: Long Expedition in Texas
Filibusters basically ended after Mexican independence, because the excuse (countering Spanish tyranny) was removed. The one filibuster against Mexico (The Fredonian Revolt) was put down in great part by Anglo-Americans under Stephen F. Austin marching against them.
The Texas Revolution brought this tradition back, because there was a filibuster inside the broader war, as Americans joined Texians in fighting against Mexico. From 1835-60, Mexico ceased to be considered a friendly sister republic and then took over the reputation as the imbruted "priest-ridden" country of Ango-American fears. So it was now fair game, as was, ultimately the entire hemisphere. This was a generational shift. The Aaron Burrs of the world saw the south as allies and partners, while Americans (particularly after the Missouri Compromise in 1820, replaced the struggle for Latin American liberty with a struggle for new lands for cotton (and with it, slavery). There is almost no trace of this ideology before 1820. But not all of these are exclusively for this reason. (Walker wanted to profit from a canal built across Nicaragua).
1846: California filibuster (quasi official)
1853: William Walker takes Sonora and Baja California.
1854: Walker joins the Civil War in Nicaragua and makes himself president of the country.
The Civil War in turn suppressed such activities, and the growing power of the US military ended private military ventures. But the hatred of Spain, particularly based on the "black legend" remained intense. Thus, when Cuba started a revolution and was subjected to atrocities, William Randolph Hearst and others revived the old passion and stoked it. The Maine destruction was just the excuse that caused the war. But the fire had been raging in the American people for five years or so before that.
Thus, the Spanish American War was essentially the final act in a long struggle between the Anglo-Saxon world that began with Drake in 1578 and ended with Theodore Roosevelt in 1898. A 320-year Cold War, if you want to look at it that way.
