For more than 200 years the White House had been home to presidents, site of official functions, and of course a center of governmental work of the Executive branch. It comes as no surprise then that the furniture, floors, carpets, windows - nearly everything, in fact - has been replaced a few times. And in 1882, a “fancy” but unexpected president decided to get rid of old furniture the old fashioned way: by selling it at public auction.
In August of 1918, as the armies of Europe neared exhaustion, American troops of the 28th “Keystone” division were thrown into a nearly forgotten battle that fully represented the horrors of the War to End All Wars.
Of the vaunted ironclad warships of the US Civil War perhaps the mightiest and most terrifying was the confederate ram Tennessee. On August 5, 1864, she would be put to the test in the largest naval engagement of the war, an engagement that defined the divided loyalties of the War of the Rebellion.