A brief look at a brief moment in American military history, courtesy of The New York Times:

“The Civil War featured many dazzling innovations: ironclads, hot-air balloons, the Gatling gun. But if armored warships and more powerful guns pointed to the future of warfare, another innovation, hailed at the time as a forerunner of combat to come, certainly did not: the United States Army’s Camel Corps.”

And, yes, the camels arrived with a most-likely-Muslim wrangler named Hadji Ali.

Read more here: “The Short Life of the Camel Corps” By Kenneth Weisbrode.