March 9 · This Day in America
The day before, a Confederate monster of iron plating, the Virginia, had smashed the Union's proud wooden fleet to splinters and proved every navy on earth obsolete in an afternoon. Then, overnight, a strange new craft arrives — the Monitor, low and flat, almost nothing above the water but a single revolving turret. At dawn the two ironclads close on each other in the shallow water off Virginia and fire at point-blank range for hours. Cannonballs bounce off both hulls and roll into the sea. Neither ship can sink the other. It is a draw, and it changes everything. In a single morning every wooden warship in the world becomes a relic. The age of iron at sea begins here, in muddy water, watched by sailors who do not yet know they are standing inside the future.
Source: www.battlefields.org
Also on this day · 1841
The Africans aboard the schooner Amistad had risen up, seized the ship, and demanded to be sailed home. Instead they were jailed in Connecticut and put on trial. Former president John Quincy Adams, old and half-deaf, argues their case before the Supreme Court. On this day the Court rules them free people, illegally enslaved, with every right to fight for their liberty. Thirty-five survivors sail home to Sierra Leone.
Source: www.history.com