In 1807, with France ascendant and demanding that neutral nations choose a side, Britain feared that Denmark would join France and, for the second time in six years, prepared a fleet to strike preemptively. This time the people of Copenhagen would suffer the consequences.
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.