~ At over 882 feet long, the Titanic was longer than any building of the time was tall. To further illustrate the sheer size of the ship, food stock carried for a typical voyage included as much as 70,000lbs of meat, 10,000lbs of sugar, 20,000 bottles of beer and stout, and 45,000 napkins, among many other items.
~ A novel titled Futility told the story of a ship known as the Titan, which was remarkably similar to the Titanic not only in size and capabilities, but also in that the Titan too struck an iceberg and sank on a cold April night. Just as in the case of the Titanic, the Titan had also been described as ‘practically unsinkable,’ and didn’t carry enough lifeboats for all, resulting in a heavy loss of life. Eerily enough, Futility was written 14 years before the Titanic disaster occurred.
~ The Titanic was the second of three nearly identical sister ships, each to be slightly improved over the last. The first sister, Olympic, had a long and successful 24 year career; the third sister, Britannic, served as a hospital ship during World War I, but sank upon striking an enemy mine.
~ The cost of a ticket for one of the Titanic’s first-class suites was $4,350; adjusted for inflation, that would be over $80,000 in today’s money. Among multiple other millionaires on board were Isidor Straus, founder of Macy’s department stores, along with his wife. They did not survive the sinking.
~ While the cause of death for the vast majority of victims of the sinking was hypothermia due to the freezing cold North Atlantic waters, one man amazingly survived for hours in the water until help arrived; the man was Titanic’s Chief Baker Charles Joughin, who consumed enough brandy during the sinking that the alcohol served as an antifreeze in his blood.
~ The captain of the Titanic, E.J. Smith, was quoted a few years prior to the fateful voyage as saying: “When anyone asks how I can best describe my experience in nearly 40 years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fog the like, but in all my experience, I have never been in any accident of any sort worth speaking about… I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.”
~ The Titanic currently rests over two miles below the ocean surface. Oceanographer Robert Ballard discovered the wreck in late 1985, with the help of the US Navy. There had been conflicting accounts as to whether the ship sank in one piece or broke in two prior to sinking, and historians sided with the former view; but the discovery of the wreck in two pieces, roughly 2,000ft apart, resolved the debate.
~ Millvina Dean, the last living survivor of the Titanic sinking, died at 97 years old in May of 2009. She was nine weeks old at the time of the sinking. She and her family were not originally supposed to be traveling on the Titanic, but a coal strike forced the White Star Line to transfer passengers and coal stock from other ships. Her father died in the sinking.
