Mercury is the least studied and most difficult to reach and observe of the inner planets, making the two missions that have visited the crater-pocked planet history that deserves to be remembered.
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.