R.M.S. Titanic, perhaps the most famous ship that ever sailed, hit an iceberg, and the next morning - April 15, 1912 - sank beneath the North Atlantic waves. She took 1,517 women, men and children to the bottom of the ocean with her, including some of the most famous names of her time.
But Titanic's voyage continues - in movies, books, TV shows and the public's fascination. Part historic chronicle, part human drama, part paranormal thriller, the tale of the doomed ship still has us in its hooks.
Today her story shifts like starlight sparkling on sea ice. Accounts and numbers differ, research changes "myth" into "fact," and vice versa. But her saga won't end.
'The Ship of Dreams'
1. At the time of her launch, the Royal Mail Steamer Titanic was the largest man-made moving object on Earth.
2. The Titanic cost $7.5 million to build.
3. The White Star Line's Titanic and her sister ship Olympic were designed to compete with the famous Cunard liners Lusitania and Mauretania.
4. More than 15,000 men worked on the ship during its construction in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
5. The Titanic's wake was so huge that, at its launch, it sucked in another ship and almost caused a collision.
6. The Titanic featured an onboard swimming pool, a gymnasium, a squash court, and a Turkish bath and two separate libraries - one for first-class passengers, and one for second class.
7. The top speed of the Titanic was 23 knots (more than 26 miles per hour).
8. The Titanic originally was designed to carry 64 lifeboats. To save from cluttering decks, the ship ended up carrying 20 on her maiden voyage.
9. Only 706 passengers and crew would survive the disaster.
Premonitions of doom
10. Passenger and fashion writer Edith Rosenbaum cabled her secretary in Paris that she had "a premonition of trouble" about the Titanic. (She survived.)
11. Governess Elizabeth Shutes was so unnerved by the smell of the night air on April 14 that she could not fall asleep. She told fellow passengers that the smell reminded her of the air inside an ice cave she had visited. (She survived.)
12. William Edward Minahan, a doctor from Fond du Lac, Wis., had his fortune read shortly before the voyage. The fortune teller predicted his death aboard the ship. She was right.
13. The plot of Morgan Robertson's novel "Futility" bears an uncanny resemblance to the Titanic disaster. The novel tells the story of the Titan, the largest ship ever built, billed as "unsinkable," which strikes an iceberg in April and sinks. In the book, more than half the passengers die in the North Atlantic because of a lifeboat shortage. The book was published 14 years before the Titanic sank.
Wisconsin on deck
14. Capt. Edward G. Crosby, a Milwaukee veteran of the Civil War, founded a steamship company on Lake Michigan but became famous for refusing to put enough lifeboats for all the passengers on his steamers. Aboard the Titanic, he was unable to find a place on a lifeboat, and he sank with the ship.
15. Danish immigrant Claus Peter Hansen and his wife, Jennie, operated a barbershop in Racine. He went into the Atlantic waters after the collision. Jennie made it into a lifeboat and lived until 1952.
16. Louise Kink Pope was 4 years old when she went on board the Titanic. She and her mother, Luise, were loaded into a lifeboat, but her father was told to remain on deck. Instead, he jumped into the lifeboat as it was being lowered. The family survived and Pope died in Milwaukee at age 84 in 1992.
17. Ida "Daisy" Minahan, sister to William (See No. 12), caught one of the last departing lifeboats, along with Minahan's wife, Lillian.
18. In one of the most obvious "Titanic" movie goofs, Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Jack Dawson, claims to have gone ice fishing on Lake Wissota near Chippewa Falls. Unfortunately for scriptwriter James Cameron, Lake Wissota is a man-made reservoir that didn't exist until 1917.
Lifestyles of the rich . . .
19. The cost of the most expensive First Class Parlor ticket to New York was $4,350 - about $69,600 today.
20. The first-class dining saloon was sheathed in hand-cut mahogany paneling.
21. The first-class smoking lounge was for men only.
22. First-class passenger Eleanor Widener wore a famous multi- strand pearl necklace then valued at $250,000.
23. Many of the first-class female passengers left the Titanic still dressed in the silk evening gowns they had worn to dinner.
24. A new Renault car was part of Titanic's cargo.
25. The Titanic was stocked with 20,000 bottles of beer and stout, 1,500 bottles of wine and 8,000 cigars for use by first-class passengers.
26. The last dinner served in the first-class saloon consisted of 11 courses.
27. Buglers called first-class passengers to dinner by playing "The Roast Beef of Old England."
28. First-class passengers were given copies of "The White Star Music Book" containing 352 songs so they could make requests. The musicians had to know all the titles.
29. About 60% of the first-class passengers survived.
. . . and the rest
30. Second-class accommodations were equivalent to first class in most other ocean liners of the time.
31. Most third-class cabins contained four to six bunks.
32. Third-class passengers could hear the loud roar of the ship's engines in their cabins at all times.
33. Only two bathtubs were available for more than 700 third-class passengers - one for men, one for women.
34. Gates separating the third-class spaces from the other classes were kept locked even after the collision, according to some first-hand reports.
35. About 42% of the second-class passengers aboard survived.
36. About 25% of the third-class passengers survived.
The berg
37. The iceberg was spawned from a glacier in Greenland.
38. One recent scientific theory holds that the moon's extremely close approach to Earth on Jan. 4, 1912, created such strong tides that it sent an array of icebergs south into the Titanic's path.
39. The Titanic's launch was delayed by six weeks because her sister ship Olympic needed repairs in the same dry dock. That delay put seasonal icebergs right in the Titanic's path.
40. Titanic Capt. Edward Smith did try to avoid ice danger by altering the ship's course to the south after receiving warnings of icebergs from other ships.
41. At 11:40 p.m., Frederick Fleet was the first person on the Titanic to see the iceberg, describing it as something "even darker than the darkness."
42. The berg was about 100 feet tall.
43. At 32 degrees, the iceberg was warmer than the water Titanic passengers fell into that night. The ocean waters were 28 degrees, below the freezing point but not frozen because of the water's salt content.
The collision
44. A recent story in Smithsonian magazine theorizes that atmospheric conditions on the night of the sinking created optical illusions that prevented the Titanic's lookouts from seeing the iceberg.
45. The Titanic's lookout was not equipped with binoculars to see icebergs in time to avoid collision.
46. First Officer William Murdoch attempted to turn the ship to swing it past the berg.
47. From the lookout's first sighting to impact with the berg took only about 37 seconds.
48. Passengers had different descriptions for how the collision felt, from "a slight tremor" to - as described in "Shadow of the Titanic" - "as though The Titanic had passed over a thousand marbles."
49. If only four of the Titanic's watertight compartments had been breached, it would have stayed afloat. The iceberg sliced through six.
50. If the ship had hit the berg head on, Titanic probably would have survived because of the strength of its bulkheads.
The disaster
51. The Titanic's crew failed to fire correct distress signals after hitting the iceberg. Random rockets were fired, but according to the British inquiry into the wreck, the message sent by the rockets' pattern never signaled "distress." Instead, the incorrect rocket pattern signaled to any ship in the area the message: "I'm having navigation problem. Please stand clear."
52. The Titanic held no passenger lifeboat drills during its voyage.
53. A nearby vessel could be seen off the port side of the Titanic, but the ship's identity remains a mystery. The ship probably was either the Californian or a sealer called the Sampson. Had it responded, the ship would have arrived in time to save many Titanic passengers.
54. The waltz "Songe d'Automne," not "Nearer My God to Thee," was almost certainly the last song played by the Titanic orchestra, although the debate about the last song continues.
55. The musicians played for two hours and five minutes as the ship sank.
56. The ship's doom was hastened when crewman opened a gangway door to try to load lifeboats from a lower level. They couldn't reclose it, and seawater rushed in.
57. The final SOS position the Titanic sent out was incorrect.
58. The ship broke in two in its final moments.
59. The Titanic went under the waves at 2:20 a.m. ship's time April 15, about 400 miles off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
Among the saved
60. The rescue ship Carpathia began taking in Titanic survivors at 4:10 a.m.
61. Tennis players Dick Williams and Karl Behr survived and eventually would become teammates on the U.S. Davis Cup Team.
62. Margaret "Molly" Brown, social activist, U.S. Senate candidate and estranged wife of a Colorado silver mine operator, would go on to become famous in Hollywood as "The Unsinkable." During the Titanic sinking, she famously told the crewman on her lifeboat that she would throw him overboard if he kept berating the women.
63. Perfume salesman Adolphe Saalfeld lost his sample case of bottles in the sinking. He survived. Decades later, the bottles and the scents inside were recovered from the Titanic wreck and exhibited.
64. Lady Duff Gordon, one of the biggest fashion designers of her time, and her husband, Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon, both were saved but were later accused of bribing the crew to row off with only 12 people in their lifeboat. They both eventually were cleared.
65. Third-class passenger Rhoda Abbott jumped from the Titanic deck along with her two sons. The two boys drowned, but Abbott was the only female Titanic survivor to be pulled from the water.
66. Chief Baker Charles Joughin helped load bread into the lifeboats. Apparently immunized to freezing cold waters by the whiskey he had drunk, Joughin reportedly survived several hours swimming in the ocean before being rescued.
67. An Italian emigrant aboard the Titanic, who leaped into the sea when the last lifeboat was lowered, swam to the side of a lifeboat and was dragged in when he said he had a bottle of whiskey, Alice Johnson, a passenger in the lifeboat, told friends.
68. G. Wikeman, the Titanic's barber, reported he'd been blown off the ship during one of its explosions.
69. J. Bruce Ismay, owner of the Titanic, jumped in a lifeboat and was rowed away. He spent the rest of his life mostly in seclusion in Ireland.
70. Of the 12 dogs onboard the Titanic, only three survived its sinking: a Pekingese and two Pomeranians.
Among the lost
71. Archibald Butt, aide to Presidents William Taft and Theodore Roosevelt, had taken a vacation to recover after finding himself in the middle of a feud between the two presidents he'd served. He went down with the ship.
72. William Thomas Stead, one of the founders of investigative journalism, who exposed the evils of child prostitution, was last seen sitting in a leather chair reading a book.
73. Macy's department store partner Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida, died together. Ida reportedly had her foot on the edge of a lifeboat and was about to climb in. Instead, she returned to her husband and shared his fate.
74. The body of the richest man on board, John Jacob Astor, was found with his gold pocket watch dangling from its chain. Investigators believed Astor had checked his watch right before leaping from the Titanic.
75. Millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim put his mistress into a lifeboat and then changed into evening wear to await the ship's fatal plunge.
76. All eight members of the Titanic band died in the sinking.
77. Joseph Laroche, a native of Haiti and an engineer, was the only black passenger reported on board. He died in the wreck.
78. 3,500 bags of mail were lost.
79. Capt. E.J. Smith, who had planned to retire from the sea after helming Titanic's maiden voyage, went down with his ship.
80. One of the lifeboats was found in the ocean almost a month after the sinking with three bodies in it.
81. Only 306 bodies of Titanic passengers were recovered.
82. Rescuers burned some of the clothing from recovered bodies to deter souvenir hunting.
83. The body of a 2-year-old passenger was not identified until 2007. DNA evidence finally showed that the body was that of Sidney Leslie Goodwin of England.
Survivors who never lived
84. Maxixe the Pig Music Box. Owner Edith Rosenbaum Russell retrieved her pig music box from her Titanic stateroom just before getting into a lifeboat. She played the pig to help calm children in the boat. The pig became part of the Titanic legend, and the subject of the children's book, "Pig on the Titanic: A True Story."
85. Polar the Titanic Bear. Douglas Spedden, 7, took his stuffed bear Polar with him on the Titanic. Spedden and Polar were rescued, and Spedden's mother wrote a book, "Polar the Titanic Bear," as a Christmas gift for Douglas. In 1994, the book was published publicly, selling more than 250,000 copies.
Aftermath
86. The British newspaper The London Daily Mail reported "Titanic Sunk, No Lives Lost," in its initial April 16, 1912, story.
87. The New York Times devoted 75 pages to coverage of the Titanic in the first week after the sinking.
88. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch suggested the suffragette movement would end after the Titanic's sinking because women would fear that it would end the "women and children first" lifeboat rule.
89. The U.S. Senate inquiry into the disaster led to a recommendation that U.S. statutes be changed to require that all passenger vessels carry "sufficient lifeboats to accommodate every passenger and every member of the crew."
Its heart goes on
90. Titanic survivor actress Dorothy Gibson starred in the silent film "Saved From the Titanic" four weeks after the wreck, wearing the same clothes she wore aboard ship.
91. Second Officer Charles Lightoller and passenger Jack Thayer both wrote books describing their survival experiences aboard the Titanic.
92. According to the California ScienCenter, nearly five Titanics could be built at today's approximate equivalent cost of $400 million each with the money Cameron's movie "Titanic" has made (more than $1.84 billion worldwide so far).
93. Passenger Lawrence Beesley survived two Titanic sinkings. After the first, he made the lifeboats, and later was hired as a consultant for the 1958 film "A Night to Remember." He sneaked on the set as an extra scheduled to go down with the ship during filming, but he was discovered by the director and was thrown out.
94. The song "Down With the Old Canoe" about the Titanic sinking was recorded decades later by a group of South Carolina cotton mill workers.
95. Lady Marjorie Bellamy is lost with the Titanic in an episode of the "Masterpiece Theatre" series "Upstairs Downstairs," but her maid survives.
96. In the first episode of the hit PBS series "Downton Abbey," the presumptive heir to Downton Abbey dies aboard the Titanic.
97. "The Titanic Requiem," a debut symphonic work from Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb and his son Robin-John Gibb, recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, was released April 3 to commemorate the Titanic anniversary.
98. A first-class lunch menu from the Titanic dated April 14, 1912, sold for 76,000 British pounds on March 31, 2012.
99. Of course, there's an app for the Titanic; it's published by The History Press.
100. Cyril Quigley watched the Titanic leave Belfast's Harland and Wolff shipyard in 1912 when he was 4. On March 31, 2012, Quigley, age 105, was guest of honor at the opening of the Titanic Belfast museum in Northern Ireland.
