In 1925 the United States decided to send a significant naval fleet on a visit to Australia and New Zealand. The press emphasized goodwill, and events like sports contests between US sailors and local residents. But the voyage had much deeper, and more complex, diplomatic goals.
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.