2024 is, the UN has proclaimed, the international year of the camelid. That may seem odd to Americans, whose, if having encountered them at all, most common close encounter with a camel was likely paying a few dollars to ride on one at a country fair. Still, camels have a fascinating history, even some here in the United States, and are still vitally important in many parts of the world.
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.
The 1927 Coverdale Mine Brinks Armored Car robbery was a particularly violent episode in the particularly violent era.
In 1933 a farmer named Ed Carlson walked into a laboratory at the University of Wisconsin and asked a simple question- what was killing his cattle? The answer to that question would earn the university millions of dollars, and revolutionize the fields of both medicine and vermin extermination. The strange story of warfarin deserves to be remembered.