More Essex class aircraft carriers were built than any other capital ship in the 20th century, and the class would be witness to events that would come to define the modern world, and the age of the aircraft carrier.
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.