It was 1883 in the village of Eagle, Wisconsin, and Clarissa Wood had a rock. Well, it was slightly more than a rock - it was a 12-sided stone, of a “warm sunny color”. She brought it to a jeweler in Milwaukee, who examined briefly before agreeing that it was probably topaz. He bought it for $1.
In August of 1918, as the armies of Europe neared exhaustion, American troops of the 28th “Keystone” division were thrown into a nearly forgotten battle that fully represented the horrors of the War to End All Wars.
Of the vaunted ironclad warships of the US Civil War perhaps the mightiest and most terrifying was the confederate ram Tennessee. On August 5, 1864, she would be put to the test in the largest naval engagement of the war, an engagement that defined the divided loyalties of the War of the Rebellion.