Free Republic

OBILE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama woman who says she was falsely arrested for shoplifting at a Walmart and then threatened by the company after her case was dismissed has been awarded $2.1 million in damages. A Mobile County jury on Monday ruled in favor of Lesleigh Nurse of Semmes, news outlets reported. Nurse said in a lawsuit that she was stopped in November 2016 when trying to leave a Walmart with groceries she said she already paid for, according to AL.com. She said she used self-checkout but the scanning device froze. Workers didn’t accept her explanation and she was...

At the beginning of the Civil War the United States had a merchant marine that was second only to Great Britain’s in size. By the end of the war the nation was no longer a maritime power, except in its Navy, which would be quickly and radically reduced in size. Although little noted by history, this profound change had been brought about by Confederate naval strategy. It was perhaps the South’s greatest victory of the war, and the only one to affect the country permanently. Wolf of the Deep: Raphael Semmes and the Notorious Confederate Raider CSS Alabama, by Stephen...

CHERBOURG, France -- American cannon blasts bellowed in the English Channel 140 years ago, and bloodied bodies lined the deck of a sinking Confederate ship. Teary onlookers watched in horror from the Normandy coast.On June 19, 1864, far from battlefields at home, the USS Kearsarge hunted down and sank a dreaded Confederate raider in one of the most important naval battles of the U.S. Civil War - off the coast of France.The Confederate State Ship Alabama today lies where it sank under 198 feet of swirling currents about 7 nautical miles off the French town of Cherbourg.On Thursday, the Civil...