It is March 13, and 346 years ago today the Massachusetts Bay Colony made a novel purchase. Boston Magazine wrote in 2014: “On March 13, 1677, the imperial dreams of Massachusetts came to fruition. For on that day, our colony bought Maine for £1,250 sterling.”
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.