Despite the distraction of the ongoing World War, troops from thirteen nations were involved in the Russian Civil War, fighting over a variety of goals and objectives. Among those was the United States, which had troops fighting in the bitter Russian cold even after the war in Europe came to an end.
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.
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.