The incident began on 12 January 1958 as the crew of the Chilean Navy transporter Micalvi built a lighthouse on the islet Snipe to improve navigation in the channel.

[1] On 11 May, the Argentine lighthouse was dismantled and transported to Puerto Williams by the crew of the Chilean patrol boat Lientur.

To confront the crisis, the Chilean government, in the last days of the second Carlos Ibáñez del Campo administration, issued the Ley Reservada del Cobre (Spanish for Copper secret law) that provided yearly for part of state-owned Codelco's copper sales, without parliamentary control, for the purchase of weapons.

[6] Twenty years later, in 1978, in order to avoid a repetition of the fait accompli, Chile placed troops on Snipe and their other islands south of the Beagle Channel before the start of Operation Soberania, Argentina's planned invasion.

The fate of Snipe islet has since been settled by the Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1984, as an internationally recognized territory of Chile.