USS Monitor's cat mystery: "Was there a black cat aboard the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, placed inside a cannon by a superstitious but desperate sailor as the vessel was sinking?
Crewman Francis Butts wrote in an 1885 magazine article that... the cat sat on the breech of one of the guns 'howling one of those hoarse and solemn tunes which no one can appreciate who is not filled with the superstitions which I had been taught by the sailors, who are always afraid to kill a cat.'"
