http://www.monitorcenter.org/preserving/
A nicely put-together website to document the history and preservation of the USS Monitor. I’m a Civil War freak, due in large part to the tremendous leap in innovation from the start of the conflict to its end. In four years, firearms went from muskets to repeating rifles (and the first ever machine gun, though it saw limited use), the first ship was “killed” by a submarine (man-powered) and the end of wooden-ship navies was heralded by the arrival of the Monitor, the first top-to-bottom-designed and -built ironclad. Given the one gun top-mounted on a rotating turret, one wonders if it couldn’t conceivably be called the first tank, too. Amazing stuff.