In a 1981 Department of Defense report a short, seven sentence paragraph revealed a previously unacknowledged event that had occurred near the tiny town of Vale, South Dakota, seventeen years earlier. If nothing else, that time when the warhead fell off a Minuteman nuclear missile reminds us why it is important to use the correct tool for the job.
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.