It is March 6th, and 549 years ago today Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was born in the Republic of Florence. Known simply as Michelangelo, he was a sculptor, a painter, an architect and a poet. Widely regarded as the greatest sculptor in history, his works can certainly be said to have stood the test of time. But, of course, over that time, things continued to occur on March 6.
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.