Discovered! A sunken US battleship

It was the U.S. battleship known to be “too tough to die.”

The USS Nevada saw duty in World War I, survived Pearl Harbor, helped in D-Day invasion, and observed atomic testing in the Pacific.

Then, for more than seven decades, its radioactive hull was lost to the deep. Now, after archival research and underwater survey of more than 100 square miles of seafloor, the remains of the Nevada have been located three miles below the Pacific's surface, 65 nautical miles southwest of Pearl Harbor.

The same outfit, Search Inc., that discovered the slave ship Clotilda in Mobile Bay, Alabama tracked down the Nevada, Nat Geo's Kristin Romey reports.

But wartime history is more than hardware lost at sea. At the end of this newsletter, Nat Geo’s Indira Lakshmanan and Eve Conant tell stories of two strong-willed women who escaped the Nazis and the Communists to find homes and lives in the United States—their mothers.

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Related: Having a home birth in the time of COVID-19.

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A Rosie the Riveter’s 100th: During WWII, Mary Fierros riveted the wings on B-29 bombers in Long Beach, California. Later in life, after “Tia Mary” rose from the factory floor to become an HR official at Levi Strauss, her character and stories became famous through the stand-up act of her great-niece, comedian Anjelah Johnson. When Fierros recently celebrated her big one-oh-oh, she sat on a chair in her front yard in San Jose, with a sparkly white mask on, watching a 15-minute procession of honking vehicles and of waving passengers. The socially distanced “paraders” included Police Chief Eddie Garcia and council member Magdalena Carrasco, the Mercury-News reports. (Thanks to reader Manuel Jimenez Jr. for the tip.)

Germany had to surrender twice: The first time came before the Allies in Reims, France on May 7, 1945. Furious, the Soviet Union demanded a second surrender ceremony in Berlin. That happened on May 9, Erin Blakemore reports for Nat Geo. Just before came the savage Battle of Berlin. Here's a look at that battle from Nat Geo’s History magazine.

Dining alone: For Muslims worldwide, the pandemic has disrupted the most communal of months, Ramadan. Instead of the historically traditional crowded nighttime prayers and a fast-breaking dinner with family and friends, Muslims like Chicago’s Tarik Haque, a Bangladeshi army veteran, are alone. On the upside, he’s able to talk via phone to the imam at his mosque and eat eggrolls and chapli kababs sent by friends, writes Tasmiha Khan for Nat Geo. Among those sharing food, a creative workaround to sustain the Ramadan spirit, is Chicago’s Saadia Shariff, a middle school teacher. She says she and her siblings are “dropping food off at their homes without contact. I leave the food in my trunk and someone will come out and grab it and put food they made in return.”

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Related: How WWI launched mapmaking at National Geographic

This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard, with Jen Tse and Eslah Attar selecting the photos. Thanks for reading, and happy trails.