Saturday, January 18, 2014

January 19, 1864---Coal Torpedoes



JANUARY 19, 1864:            

An Anti-Conscription rally is held in Little Rock, Arkansas. Confederate flags are torn down.

On this day, a Confederate inventor creates the “coal torpedo.” A rough-hewn piece of hollowed-out iron painted black, a coal torpedo was loaded with gunpowder and dropped into the coal bin of a building or a ship where it was indistinguishable from real coal. When shoveled into a boiler, the coal torpedo would turn red-hot, igniting the gunpowder and causing a damaging---sometimes devastating---explosion. Coal torpedoes were not much used in the war, but the few that were were extremely destructive.


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