A program of Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
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A Bug in Someone's Biscuit

Sometimes it's worth skipping all the words and just looking at the pictures. Above is one of our favorite images in the encyclopedia: two pieces of hardtack biscuit issued to two Confederate prisoners during the Civil War. What's fun, especially for students, is to use the encyclopedia's viewfinder to zoom into the top right of the biscuit on the right. You can just barely see it here—a little bug that has managed to remain intact for more than 150 years!

Click on the link below to zoom in and then read the caption to read more about what Civil War soldiers ate, the bugs they so bravely battled, and even the two Virginia men to whom these crackers belonged.

(Image: The Museum of the Confederacy; photography by Alan Thompson)

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A Carolina dog

 
 

A Tail-Wagging Time Traveler

Our entry on domesticated animals in Early Virginia Indian society begins with the only half-tame dogs who hung around camp, eating whatever scraps were available. A reader points us to remarkable new discoveries that suggest that those same dogs might still be among us, and still only half-tame.

 
 

This Month in Virginia History


July 1–3, 1863: The Battle of Gettsyburg is fought in Pennsylvania and Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia is forced to retreat south.

July 10, 1923: Earl Hamner Jr., creator of The Waltons, is born in Nelson County.

July 10, 1943: The tennis champion Arthur Ashe is born in Richmond. On his birthday in 1996, a statue of Ashe is unveiled on Monument Avenue in Richmond.

July 11, 1963: Martin Luther King Jr. travels to Danville and speaks to civil rights protesters there.

July 15, 1864: The banker Maggie Lena Walker is born in Richmond. Her mother is a servant in the home of Elizabeth Van Lew; her father is a white abolitionist writer.

July 22, 1587: After landing on the Outer Banks of present-day North Carolina, John White and forty men sail to Roanoke Island to check on a garrison of soldiers left there the year before. They find only the bones of one of the men.

July 24, 1609: A hurricane strikes the nine-ship English fleet bound for Virginia, and the flagship Sea Venture is separated from the other vessels.