On this day, 144 years ago. . .

I swam about four miles and came to an island covered with timber. I climbed a tree, and the water surrounding it was about ten feet deep. Now, when I hear persons talking about being hard up, I think of my condition at that time—up in a tree in the middle of the Mississippi River, a thousand miles from home, not one cent to my name, nor a pocket to put it in...

—A. C. Brown, 2nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, describing how he survived the Sultana disaster