The Athenian Parthenon is perhaps the most recognized of the ruins of the ancient world. But how, exactly, did the great temple become a ruin? Was it an ancient battle? A disaster of antiquity? Well, neither. It might surprise you to find out that the building itself remained largely intact into the early modern era.
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.