In 1789, the Spanish empire prepared to enforce their territorial claims far to the North of what they nominally controlled, and instigated a crisis that threatened to bring the great European powers to war.
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.