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On July 20, 1969, at 10:56 PM, eastern time, television images of Neil Armstrong were broadcast world wide as he put his foot on the lunar surface. But there is far more to the program that represented mankind's first extra-terrestrial steps than that first one. And one mission is perhaps more forgotten than others, because of the coincidence of history.
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.
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.
