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The Underappreciated Nikola Tesla, and Other Under-Recognized Historic Figures

Khalid Elhassan January 12, 2020 32 min

Nikola Tesla - A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers — Nikola Tesla. Pintrest

20. Joining the War

A nurse taking care of wounded soldiers during the Civil War. Los Angeles Civil War Round Table

Soon after the Civil War began, a surgeon in an Illinois regiment and a friend of Mary Ann Bickerdyke wrote home about the abysmal conditions in military hospitals in Cairo, Illinois. Bickerdyke’s community collected $500 worth of supplies, and she was the only volunteer willing to deliver them.

She ended up getting appointed as a field agent for the US Sanitary Commission – a private relief agency created to support sick and wounded soldiers. A strong-willed woman, she was determined to let nothing stand in the way of her quest to bring order to field hospitals and improve a lot of the soldiers being treated in them.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.