“Visiting the Titanic” footage shot by Rob Goldsmith in July 2005 for the History Channel. (Courtesy of the History Channel UK, copyright 2011)
With the 100th anniversary of the ship disaster approaching on April 15, a “Titanic wave of myth, memory and moneymaking is about to wash and slosh over the planet,” writes Kirk Johnson in “The Titanic That Really Won’t Sink” :
… the Titanic’s lasting imprint is not just the story that never gets old for many people, with its historical resonance of hubris and technology — the supposedly perfect ship that sank after hitting an iceberg on its first outing — or the sense of doom that haunts the retelling.
Some disaster experts say the Titanic’s tale has now in many ways insinuated itself into how real disasters are perceived, and even how they unfold. Through a combination of cultural forces in the information age, they say — the movies, the hundreds of books on the subject — the Titanic’s loss and how people responded to it have become a filter for seeing disasters in general.
– On This Day in History | April 15
Find a link to the original New York Times front page article from 100 years ago, headlined, “Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg; 866 Rescued By Carpathia, Probably 1,250 Perish; Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Noted Names Missing.”
– We have many teaching ideas along with links to both Titanic-era and more recent reporting on the topic in our post “100 Years Later: Ways to Teach About the Titanic With The Times.”
– Times Topics Page | The Titanic
Historical and current articles, multimedia and links to information around the Web on the topic.
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