There was a brief period- actually more than two decades,- when the US government thought that they may actually be able to limit the awesome power of nature’s vortex. The ambitious "Project Stormfury" 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.