On May 21, 1941, more than six months before the US entry into the war, the SS Robin Moor became the first US flagged merchant ship to be sunk by a German U-boat, all part of the long path towards US entry into the largest war in human history.
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.