Godey's Book 1860 Between hoop skirts and corsets, Victorian women showed off an exaggerated female shape in a way even a modern day bikini does not. “My Victorian black wool dress is historically accurate because it’s completely hand-sewn. Early Victorian dress were always sewn by hand. All seams – the visible as well as the hidden seams are hand-sewn! It took me 28 hours from start to finish: 11 hours for the skirt and 17 hours for the bodice. Yes, I measured the time because I was curious how long it took back then to sew a dress entirely by hand!”—modern day re enactor Hoop Skirt History Fashion historians know the hoop skirt in the 1830s and  1840s was not its first appearance, rather a reappearance  of a fashion set by the 16 year old Princess Catherine of  Aragon, fiancé of Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales.  Catherine’s dress of the 1500s was straighter and less  bell shaped. As with Catherine’s time, preceding  women’s fashion had been nearly the opposite of a hoop  skirt. “

The US War With Paraguay--1858 Map of the area in 1864 Yes.  The United States almost went to war with Paraguay in 1858. Yeah. That Paraguay. The landlocked country in the middle of South America, then about the size of Texas. Congress authorized President Buchanan “to restore American honor by any means including force if necessary,” (similar to the Congressional authorization President Lyndon Johnson received to launch the Vietnam War.) It was a serious operation which sent one fourth of the US Navy (19 ships) and 2,500 troops to Buenos Aires to await orders to sail 1,300 miles up the Paraná River for which they had few charts, past well-armed forts, to invade a country for which they had no maps nor any idea of the size of enemy forces. And the President/dictator of Paraguay, Carlos Antonio Lopez, originally thought he was signing a treaty of goodwill and trade between the two countries.  President Carlos Antonio Lopez If it had not been for cool heads of an American navy admiral a