In the weeks following the Titanic sinking, over 118,000 people had joined the “just missed it club”, claiming they had missed or canceled their trip at the last moment.
Titanic
The elderly couple seen hugging…
The elderly couple seen hugging on the bed in Titanic (1997) while water floods their room were the owners of Macy’s department store, Rosalie Ida Straus and Isidor Straus. Ida refused a seat on a lifeboat, stating “Where you go, I go” which inspired Rose’s line in the film.
Isidor was offered a place on the lifeboat with Ida when an officer recognized him and saw that Ida refused to board without her husband. Isidor refused to be made an exception when there were other women and children on board.
Instead, Ida gave her seat on the lifeboat to her newly hired maid, Ellen Bird, along with her fur coat. Bird is the one who would tell the story to reporters after she was rescued by the Carpathia. Ellen Bird tracked down the Straus’ eldest daughter, Sara, and offered her the fur coat. Sara refused to accept it, saying it had been a gift from her mother.
One of the 2 co-owners/founders of Macy…
One of the 2 co-owners/founders of Macy’s died on the Titanic, along with his wife, because he refused to board rescue ships before women and children were helped. His wife chose to stay behind because she did not want to abandon her husband, so they both died together aboard the Titanic.
The fourth funnel on the Titanic…
The fourth funnel on the Titanic was fake. It was for appearances only: it made the ship look bigger. It was not connected to the charcoal ovens, but it was connected to the first-class smoking room, making it a sort of oversized kitchen hood.
The Chief Baker on the Titanic…
The Chief Baker on the Titanic “fortified” himself using alcohol and survived the freezing for two hours until he was rescued from the sinking ocean liner.
In 1898, Morgan Robertson wrote…
In 1898, Morgan Robertson wrote a novel about an ocean liner sinking in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg. That is 14 years before the Titanic sunk in the same place and in the same way. And if this was not enough, the novel was titled: “The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility”. The ship in the novel, just like in real life, was touted as “unsinkable” and therefore did not have enough lifeboats aboard to accommodate all the passengers.
26 years before Titanic…
26 years before Titanic, William Thomas Stead wrote a story called “How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid Atlantic by a Survivor.” The title’s pretty descriptive, with the concern of the story being a lack of adequate safety precautions, specifically lifeboats. Stead himself would die on Titanic.
A young Irishman threw a message…
A young Irishman threw a message in a bottle from the sinking Titanic. He drowned. A year later, the bottle washed up on a beach — just a few miles from his mother’s home in Ireland.
A single Boeing 777 Engine delivers…
A single Boeing 777 Engine delivers twice the horsepower of all the Titanic’s steam engines combined.
The first dramatic film of the Titanic sinking…
The first dramatic film of the Titanic sinking was released just 29 days after the event in 1912. It was written by and stars Dorothy Gibson, an actual survivor. For the film, she wore the exact same clothes she wore during the sinking.