Today, much of our knowledge of the Titanic comes from the 1998 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. While we may remember how tragic this movie was (I know I do), it doesn’t even hold a candle to the real life tragedy of the event.
The Titanic was very, very real, and there’s a lot to learn about what actually happened on the night she sank to the bottom of the ocean.
#12. There was a Japanese survivor who escaped the ship. But when he returned to Japan, he was shamed, and told he should have gone down with the ship.
#11. One of the most emotional moments of the Titanic film is when the band members continue playing to calm down the passengers. And this ACTUALLY happened. They played for hours after the ship hit the iceberg.
#10. If the iceberg had been seen only 30 seconds before it was, and the Captain was notified, the accident could have been avoided.
Just 30 more seconds…
#9. Milton Hershey, a.k.a. the man who’s behind one of the greatest chocolate bars of all time, had tickets to be on the Titanic, but changed his plans.
#8. The four smokestacks that have become so famous, and associated with the ship? The fourth one didn’t even work! It was totally just for decoration.
#7. More than half of the lifeboats on the ship were not filled to capacity.
If they had been, many more lives could have been saved.
#6. Only one ocean liner in history has been sunk by an iceberg: Titanic.
#5. There had been a sort of life boat drill planned for the day before the ship sank. It would allow passengers to actually practice what to do in the case of an emergency. It was cancelled.
#4. The infamous iceberg that brought the Titanic to her knees has been floating around since around 1,000 B.C.
#3. The budget for the James Cameron film Titanic was actually higher than the budget spent on building the ship in real life.
#2. The chef was one of the survivors from the ship, and his survival is credited to the amount of liquor he drank right before going underwater, which kept his body temperature up.
#1. The Californian, another ship in the Atlantic that night, was not very far from the Titanic. But the communication to them was delayed, and they were unable to rescue the many passengers.
