My favorite piece of trivia about this time period was the passage of the Guano Island Act in 1865. It allowed US citizens to claim islands with guano deposits

My favorite piece of trivia about this time period was the passage of the Guano Island Act in 1865. It allowed US citizens to claim islands with guano deposits to be US territories. Islands claimed under the act were even afforded protection by the US military. The US is still in possession of a handful of islands claimed under the Act. A few are even still in diplomatic dispute.