A half century after Marco Polo's journey, a Muslim scholar little known here in the west traveled more than four times as far. Like Marco Polo, the record of his journey provides in some cases the only remaining written account of exotic places and people.
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.