The Last Civil War Funeral

The crew of the H.l. Hunley finally has been laid to rest - some 140 years after its Confederate submarine disappeared.

In what has been called the last Civil War funeral, the remains of eight crew members were buried in Charleston, S.C., in April. Their coffins, draped in Confederate flags, were carried on horse-drawn caissons to Charleston’s oldest public cemetery. Thousands of reenactors - men in blue and gray and women in black hoop skirts - and 40 descendants of the crew members attended the burial.

“Their example has fired the imagination of submariners in the 140 years since they made history,” said William Dudley, director of the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C. “The men of the Hunley are the fathers of submariners.” Scientists also released profiles and facial reconstructions of the crew members based on extensive genealogical and scientific research.

The Hunley, a 40-foot, hand-cranked submarine, went down after it attacked the USS Housatonic, one of the Union ships blockading Charleston Harbor, making it the first submarine in world history to sink an enemy ship in battle. No one knows what sunk the Hunley; the submarine was found off the South Carolina coast nine years ago and raised in 2000.

The crewmen were buried in a common grave, in the order they sat in the submarine, alongside 13 other men who were part of the first two crews of the Hunley.

My Lai Hero Honored

Former u.s. army helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, who stopped a murderous rampage in Vietnam’s My Lai village in 1968, has been inducted into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame. Thompson landed his helicopter in front of advancing troops and helped airlift to safety 11 Vietnamese civilians—the only survivors of the attack, in which 504 people were killed.

Initially, Thompson’s actions were treated with contempt back home. It wasn’t until 1998 that he was awarded the Soldier’s Medal.