New Delhi, March 23 -- Even as a war rages on in West Asia, it's ffunny to think that centuries ago, countries fought over mere bird droppings.

In the mid-1800s, some countries considered guano-accumulated seabird and bat droppings-to be the ultimate nitrogenous fertilizer. On the Chincha Islands, off the coast of Peru, centuries of seabird deposits had created mountains of poop. The US passed the Guano Islands Act in 1856 which allowed Americans to take possession of any unclaimed island containing guano. In 1864, Spain seized the Chincha Islands from Peru, setting off a series of battles between Spain and its former colonies.

The man who made these poop wars irrelevant was Fritz Haber, a German chemist who, in the early 1900s figured ...