The history, prior to the 1967 ratification of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, of what John Adams, the first man to hold the office, described as “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived” deserves 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.