It is October, and millions of American children will be participating in an annual tradition, traveling to a local pumpkin patch to choose the orange orb that they and their parents will carve into a Jack-o-Lantern. But where did the entire idea arise? And how long has it been going on?
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.