On January 22, 1883 the New York Times lamented: It is a mockery of science and human skill that a ship so well-appointed and furnished with all the modern appliances, that the Cimbria should be run down and sunk, with nearly all on board.” Before the Titanic, there was the Cimbria, and the victims of the Cimbria disaster deserve to be remembered.
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.