Just as the city was establishing itself as the financial capital of the United States, a combination of the results of rapid population growth and terrible weather resulted in a fire that laid waste to the wealthiest part of America’s wealthiest city. As the New York Mercantile Advisor wrote, “there is a terrible calamity in New York.”
The appeal of one strange object, which achieved dizzying popularity in my lifetime, and today lives on mostly for nostalgia, is not so difficult to explain. All you need to do is turn one on and wait.
During the civil war, the manufacture of powder and explosives was often handled by the most vulnerable, young women and children, whose labor was needed when so many men had been sent off to war. On March 13, 1863, the confederacy experienced a munitions disaster, in the confederate capitol of Richmond.