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The National Climate Assessment summarizes the impacts of climate change on the United States, now and in the future.

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Different Types of Weather | PBS LearningMedia

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Learn how four factors-temperature, wind, precipitation, and sunlight and clouds-are present in different types of weather in this video gallery from WGBH. Weather factors are always changing and each unique combination of factors describes a different type of weather.

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Weather is the state of the atmosphere. Things like precipitation, thunderstorms and tornadoes form due to factors such as air pressure, temperature and condensation.

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You won't find it on any official map and you won't know when you cross the line, but according to some people, the Bermuda Triangle is a very real place where dozen of ships, planes and people have disappeared with no good explanation. Since a magazine first coined the phrase "Bermuda Triangle" in 1964, the mystery has continued to attract attention. When you dig deeper into most cases, though, they're much less mysterious. Either they were never in the area to begin with, they were actually found, or there's a reasonable explanation for their disappearance.

Does this mean there's nothing to the claims of so many who have had odd experiences in the Bermuda Triangle? Not necessarily. Scientists have documented deviations from the norm in the area and have found some interesting formations on the seafloor within the Bermuda Triangle's boundaries. So, for those who like to believe in it, there is plenty fuel for the fire.

In this article, we'll look at the facts surrounding what we do know about the area as well as some of the most commonly-recited stories. We'll also explore the bizarre theories like aliens and space portals as well as the mundane explanations.

Many think of the Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, as an "imaginary" area. The U. S. Board of Geographic Names does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle and does not maintain an official file on it. However, within this imaginary area, many real vessels and the people aboard them have seemingly disappeared without explanation.

The Bermuda Triangle is located off the Southeastern coast of the United States in the Atlantic Ocean, with its apexes in the vicinities of Bermuda, Miami, Florida, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. It covers roughly 500,000 square miles.

The area may have been named after its Bermuda apex since Bermuda was once known as the "Isle of Devils." Treacherous reefs that have ensnared ships sailing too close to its shores surround Bermuda, and there are hundreds of shipwrecks in the waters that surround it.

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You won't find it on any official map, and you won't know when you cross the line, but according to some people, the Bermuda Triangle is a very real place where dozen of ships, planes and people have disappeared -- with no good explanation.

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Table of Contents

1. Legend of the Bermuda Triangle

2. Bermuda Triangle Theories and Counter-Theories

The Bermuda Triangle is a mythical section of the Atlantic Ocean roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico where dozens of ships and airplanes have disappeared. Unexplained circumstances surround some of these accidents, including one in which the pilots of a squadron of U.S. Navy bombers became disoriented while flying over the area; the planes were never found. Other boats and planes have seemingly vanished from the area in good weather without even radioing distress messages. But although myriad fanciful theories have been proposed regarding the Bermuda Triangle, none of them prove that mysterious disappearances occur more frequently there than in other well-traveled sections of the ocean. In fact, people navigate the area every day without incident.

Legend of the Bermuda Triangle

The area referred to as the Bermuda Triangle, or Devil's Triangle, covers about 500,000 square miles of ocean off the southeastern tip of Florida. When Christopher Columbus sailed through the area on his first voyage to the New World, he reported that a great flame of fire (probably a meteor) crashed into the sea one night and that a strange light appeared in the distance a few weeks later. He also wrote about erratic compass readings, perhaps because at that time a sliver of the Bermuda Triangle was one of the few places on Earth where true north and magnetic north lined up.

Did you know? After gaining widespread fame as the first person to sail solo around the globe, Joshua Slocum disappeared on a 1909 voyage from Martha's Vineyard to South America. Though it's unclear exactly what happened, many sources later attributed his death to the Bermuda Triangle.

William Shakespeare 's play "The Tempest," which some scholars claim was based on a real-life Bermuda shipwreck, may have enhanced the area's aura of mystery. Nonetheless, reports of unexplained disappearances did not really capture the public's attention until the 20th century.

An especially infamous tragedy occurred in March 1918 when the USS Cyclops, a 542-foot-long Navy cargo ship with over 300 men and 10,000 tons of manganese ore onboard, sank somewhere between Barbados and the Chesapeake Bay. The Cyclops never sent out an SOS distress call despite being equipped to do so, and an extensive search found no wreckage. "Only God and the sea know what happened to the great ship," U.S. President Woodrow Wilson later said. In 1941 two of the Cyclops' sister ships similarly vanished without a trace along nearly the same route.

A pattern allegedly began forming in which vessels traversing the Bermuda Triangle would either disappear or be found abandoned. Then, in December 1945, five Navy bombers carrying 14 men took off from a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, airfield in order to conduct practice bombing runs over some nearby shoals. But with his compasses apparently malfunctioning, the leader of the mission, known as Flight 19, got severely lost. All five planes flew aimlessly until they ran low on fuel and were forced to ditch at sea. That same day, a rescue plane and its 13-man crew also disappeared. After a massive weeks-long search failed to turn up any evidence, the official Navy report declared that it was "as if they had flown to Mars."

Bermuda Triangle Theories and Counter-Theories

By the time author Vincent Gaddis coined the phrase "Bermuda Triangle" in a 1964 magazine article, additional mysterious accidents had occurred in the area, including three passenger planes that went down despite having just sent "all's well" messages. Charles Berlitz, whose grandfather founded the Berlitz language schools, stoked the legend even further in 1974 with a sensational bestseller about the legend.

Since then, scores of fellow paranormal writers have blamed the triangle's supposed lethalness on everything from aliens, Atlantis and sea monsters to time warps and reverse gravity fields, whereas more scientifically minded theorists have pointed to magnetic anomalies, waterspouts or huge eruptions of methane gas from the ocean floor.

In all probability, however, there is no single theory that solves the mystery. As one skeptic put it, trying to find a common cause for every Bermuda Triangle disappearance is no more logical than trying to find a common cause for every automobile accident in Arizona.

Moreover, although storms, reefs and the Gulf Stream can cause navigational challenges there, maritime insurance leader Lloyd's of London does not recognize the Bermuda Triangle as an especially hazardous place. Neither does the U.S. Coast Guard, which says: "In a review of many aircraft and vessel losses in the area over the years, there has been nothing discovered that would indicate that casualties were the result of anything other than physical causes. No extraordinary factors have ever been identified."

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Bermuda Triangle - Location, Disappearances, Flight 19

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The Bermuda Triangle is a section of the Atlantic Ocean roughly bounded by Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico where dozens of ships and airplanes have disappeared.

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Table of Contents

in full:

Royal Mail Ship (RMS) Titanic

(Show more)

Why did the Titanic sink?

How many people died when the Titanic sank?

Where is the wreck of the Titanic?

Why is the Titanic famous?

Titanic, British luxury passenger liner that sank on April 14-15, 1912, during its maiden voyage, en route to New York City from Southampton, England, killing about 1,500 ( see Researcher's Note: Titanic) passengers and ship personnel. One of the most famous tragedies in modern history, it inspired numerous stories, several films, and a musical and has been the subject of much scholarship and scientific speculation.

Origins and construction

In the early 1900s the transatlantic passenger trade was highly profitable and competitive, with ship lines vying to transport wealthy travelers and immigrants. Two of the chief lines were White Star and Cunard. By the summer of 1907, Cunard seemed poised to increase its share of the market with the debut of two new ships, the Lusitania and the Mauretania, which were scheduled to enter service later that year. The two passenger liners were garnering much attention for their expected speed; both would later set speed records crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Looking to answer his rival, White Star chairman J. Bruce Ismay reportedly met with William Pirrie, who controlled the Belfast shipbuilding firm Harland and Wolff, which constructed most of White Star's vessels. The two men devised a plan to build a class of large liners that would be known for their comfort instead of their speed. It was eventually decided that three vessels would be constructed: the Olympic, the Titanic, and the Britannic.

On March 31, 1909, some three months after work began on the Olympic, the keel was laid for the Titanic. The two ships were built side by side in a specially constructed gantry that could accommodate their unprecedented size. The sister ships were largely designed by Thomas Andrews of Harland and Wolff. In addition to ornate decorations, the Titanic featured an immense first-class dining saloon, four elevators, and a swimming pool. Its second-class accommodations were comparable to first-class features on other ships, and its third-class offerings, although modest, were still noted for their relative comfort.

Understanding the Titanic Disaster

As to safety elements, the Titanic had 16 compartments that included doors which could be closed from the bridge, so that water could be contained in the event the hull was breached. Although they were presumed to be watertight, the bulkheads were not capped at the top. The ship's builders claimed that four of the compartments could be flooded without endangering the liner's buoyancy. The system led many to claim that the Titanic was unsinkable.

Following completion of the hull and main superstructure, the Titanic was launched on May 31, 1911. It then began the fitting-out phase, as machinery was loaded into the ship and interior work began. After the Olympic's maiden voyage in June 1911, slight changes were made to the Titanic's design. In early April 1912 the Titanic underwent its sea trials, after which the ship was declared seaworthy.

As it prepared to embark on its maiden voyage, the Titanic was one of the largest and most opulent ships in the world. It had a gross registered tonnage (i.e., carrying capacity) of 46,328 tons, and when fully laden the ship displaced (weighed) more than 52,000 tons. The Titanic was approximately 882.5 feet (269 metres) long and about 92.5 feet (28.2 metres) wide at its widest point.

Maiden voyage

On April 10, 1912, the Titanic set sail on its maiden voyage, traveling from Southampton, England, to New York City. Nicknamed the "Millionaire's Special," the ship was fittingly captained by Edward J. Smith, who was known as the "Millionaire's Captain" because of his popularity with wealthy passengers. Indeed, onboard were a number of prominent people, including American businessman Benjamin Guggenheim, British journalist William Thomas Stead, and Macy's department store co-owner Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida. In addition, Ismay and Andrews were also traveling on the Titanic.

The voyage nearly began with a collision, however, when suction from the Titanic caused the docked New York to swing into the giant liner's path. After an hour of maneuverings to prevent the accident, the Titanic was under way. On the evening of April 10 the ship stopped at Cherbourg, France. The city's dock was too small to accommodate the Titanic, so passengers had to be ferried to and from the ship in tenders. Among those boarding were John Jacob Astor and his pregnant second wife, Madeleine, and Molly Brown. After some two hours the Titanic resumed its journey. On the morning of April 11 the liner made its last scheduled stop in Europe, at Queenstown ( Cobh), Ireland. At approximately 1:30 pm the ship set sail for New York City. Onboard were some 2,200 people, approximately 1,300 of whom were passengers.

Final hours

Throughout much of the voyage, the wireless radio operators on the Titanic, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, had been receiving iceberg warnings, most of which were passed along to the bridge. The two men worked for the Marconi Company, and much of their job was relaying passengers' messages. On the evening of April 14 the Titanic began to approach an area known to have icebergs. Smith slightly altered the ship's course to head farther south. However, he maintained the ship's speed of some 22 knots. At approximately 9:40 pm the Mesaba sent a warning of an ice field. The message was never relayed to the Titanic's bridge. At 10:55 pm the nearby Leyland liner Californian sent word that it had stopped after becoming surrounded by ice. Phillips, who was handling passenger messages, scolded the Californian for interrupting him.

Two lookouts, Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee, were stationed in the crow's nest of the Titanic. Their task was made difficult by the fact that the ocean was unusually calm that night: because there would be little water breaking at its base, an iceberg would be more difficult to spot. In addition, the crow's nest's binoculars were missing. At approximately 11:40 pm, about 400 nautical miles (740 km) south of Newfoundland, Canada, an iceberg was sighted, and the bridge was notified. First Officer William Murdoch ordered both the ship "hard-a-starboard"-a maneuver that under the order system then in place would turn the ship to port (left)-and the engines reversed. The Titanic began to turn, but it was too close to avoid a collision. The ship's starboard side scraped along the iceberg. At least five of its supposedly watertight compartments toward the bow were ruptured. After assessing the damage, Andrews determined that, as the ship's forward compartments filled with water, its bow would drop deeper into the ocean, causing water from the ruptured compartments to spill over into each succeeding compartment, thereby sealing the ship's fate. The Titanic would founder. (By reversing the engines, Murdoch actually caused the Titanic to turn slower than if it had been moving at its original speed. Most experts believe the ship would have survived if it had hit the iceberg head-on.)

Smith ordered Phillips to begin sending distress signals, one of which reached the Carpathia at approximately 12:20 am on April 15, and the Cunard ship immediately headed toward the stricken liner. However, the Carpathia was some 58 nautical miles (107 km) away when it received the signal, and it would take more than three hours to reach the Titanic. Other ships also responded, including the Olympic, but all were too far away. A vessel was spotted nearby, but the Titanic was unable to contact it. The Californian was also in the vicinity, but its wireless had been turned off for the night.

As attempts were made to contact nearby vessels, the lifeboats began to be launched, with orders of women and children first. Although the Titanic's number of lifeboats exceeded that required by the British Board of Trade, its 20 boats could carry only 1,178 people, far short of the total number of passengers. This problem was exacerbated by lifeboats being launched well below capacity, because crewmen worried that the davits would not be able to support the weight of a fully loaded boat. (The Titanic had canceled its scheduled lifeboat drill earlier in the day, and the crew was unaware that the davits had been tested in Belfast.) Lifeboat number 7, which was the first to leave the Titanic, held only about 27 people, though it had space for 65. In the end, only 705 people would be rescued in lifeboats.

As passengers waited to enter lifeboats, they were entertained by the Titanic's musicians, who initially played in the first-class lounge before eventually moving to the ship's deck. Sources differ on how long they performed, some reporting that it was until shortly before the ship sank. Speculation also surrounded the last song they performed-likely either Autumn or Nearer My God to Thee. None of the musicians survived the sinking.

By 1:00 am water was seen at the base (E deck) of the Grand Staircase. Amid the growing panic, several male passengers tried to board lifeboat number 14, causing Fifth Officer Harold Lowe to fire his gun three times. Around this time, Phillips's distress calls reflected a growing desperation as one noted that the ship "cannot last much longer."

As the Titanic's bow continued to sink, the stern began to rise out of the water, placing incredible strain on the midsection. At about 2:00 am the stern's propellers were clearly visible above the water, and the only lifeboats that remained on the ship were three collapsible boats. Smith released the crew, saying that "it's every man for himself." (He was reportedly last seen in the bridge, and his body was never found.) At approximately 2:18 am the lights on the Titanic went out. It then broke in two, with the bow going underwater. Reports later speculated that it took some six minutes for that section, likely traveling at approximately 30 miles (48 km) per hour, to reach the ocean bottom. The stern momentarily settled back in the water before rising again, eventually becoming vertical. It briefly remained in that position before beginning its final plunge. At 2:20 am the ship foundered as the stern also disappeared beneath the Atlantic. Water pressure allegedly caused that section, which still had air inside, to implode as it sank.

Hundreds of passengers and crew went into the icy water. Fearful of being swamped, those in the lifeboats delayed returning to pick up survivors. By the time they rowed back, almost all the people in the water had died from exposure. In the end, more than 1,500 perished. Aside from the crew, which had about 700 fatalities, third class suffered the greatest loss: of approximately 710, only some 174 survived. (Subsequent claims that passengers in steerage were prevented from boarding boats, however, were largely dispelled. Given Smith's failure to sound a general alarm, some third-class passengers did not realize the direness of the situation until it was too late. Many women also refused to leave their husbands and sons, while the difficulty of simply navigating the complex Titanic from the lower levels caused some to reach the top deck after most of the lifeboats had been launched.)
Read our timeline of the Titanic's final hours.

Rescue

The Carpathia arrived in the area at approximately 3:30 am, more than an hour after the Titanic sank. Lifeboat number 2 was the first to reach the liner. Over the next several hours the Carpathia picked up all survivors. White Star chairman Ismay wrote a message to be sent to the White Star Line's offices: "Deeply regret advise you Titanic sank this morning fifteenth after collision iceberg, resulting serious loss life; further particulars later." At approximately 8:30 am the Californian arrived, having heard the news some three hours earlier. Shortly before 9:00 am the Carpathia headed for New York City, where it arrived to massive crowds on April 18.

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Titanic | History, Sinking, Rescue, Survivors, Movies, & Facts

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Titanic, British luxury passenger liner that sank on April 14-15, 1912, during its maiden voyage, en route to New York City from Southampton, England, killing about 1,500 people. One of the most famous tragedies in modern history, it inspired numerous works of art and has been the subject of much scholarship.

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The Building of the RMS Titanic

The Titanic was the product of intense competition among rival shipping lines in the first half of the 20th century. In particular, the White Star Line found itself in a battle for steamship primacy with Cunard, a venerable British firm with two standout ships that ranked among the most sophisticated and luxurious of their time.

Cunard's Mauretania began service in 1907 and quickly set a speed record for the fastest average speed during a transatlantic crossing (23.69 knots or 27.26 mph), a title that it held for 22 years.

Cunard's other masterpiece, Lusitania, launched the same year and was lauded for its spectacular interiors. Lusitania met its tragic end on May 7, 1915, when a torpedo fired by a German U-boat sunk the ship, killing nearly 1,200 of the 1,959 people on board and precipitating the United States' entry into World War I.

Did you know? Passengers traveling first class on Titanic were roughly 44 percent more likely to survive than other passengers.

The same year that Cunard unveiled its two magnificent liners, J. Bruce Ismay, chief executive of White Star, discussed the construction of three large ships with William J. Pirrie, chairman of the shipbuilding company Harland and Wolff. Part of a new "Olympic" class of liners, each ship would measure 882 feet in length and 92.5 feet at their broadest point, making them the largest of their time.

In March 1909, work began in the massive Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, on the second of these three ocean liners, Titanic, and continued nonstop for two years.

On May 31, 1911, Titanic's immense hull-the largest movable manmade object in the world at the time-made its way down the slipways and into the River Lagan in Belfast. More than 100,000 people attended the launching, which took just over a minute and went off without a hitch.

The hull was immediately towed to a mammoth fitting-out dock where thousands of workers would spend most of the next year building the ship's decks, constructing her lavish interiors and installing the 29 giant boilers that would power her two main steam engines.

'Unsinkable' Titanic's Fatal Flaws

According to some hypotheses, Titanic was doomed from the start by a design that many lauded as state-of-the-art. The Olympic-class ships featured a double bottom and 15 watertight bulkhead compartments equipped with electric watertight doors that could be operated individually or simultaneously by a switch on the bridge.

It was these watertight bulkheads that inspired Shipbuilder magazine, in a special issue devoted to the Olympic liners, to deem them "practically unsinkable."

But the watertight compartment design contained a flaw that was a critical factor in Titanic's sinking: While the individual bulkheads were indeed watertight, the walls separating the bulkheads extended only a few feet above the water line, so water could pour from one compartment into another, especially if the ship began to list or pitch forward.

The second critical safety lapse that contributed to the loss of so many lives was the inadequate number of lifeboats carried on Titanic. A mere 16 boats, plus four Engelhardt "collapsibles," could accommodate just 1,178 people. Titanic could carry up to 2,435 passengers, and a crew of approximately 900 brought her capacity to more than 3,300 people.

As a result, even if the lifeboats were loaded to full capacity during an emergency evacuation, there were available seats for only one-third of those on board. While unthinkably inadequate by today's standards, Titanic's supply of lifeboats actually exceeded the British Board of Trade's requirements.

Passengers on the Titanic

Titanic created quite a stir when it departed for its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912. After stops in Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown (now known as Cobh), Ireland, the ship set sail for New York with 2,240 passengers and crew-or "souls," the expression then used in the shipping industry, usually in connection with a sinking-on board.

As befitting the first transatlantic crossing of the world's most celebrated ship, many of these souls were high-ranking officials, wealthy industrialists, dignitaries and celebrities. First and foremost was the White Star Line's managing director, J. Bruce Ismay, accompanied by Thomas Andrews, the ship's builder from Harland and Wolff.

Absent was financier J.P. Morgan, whose International Mercantile Marine shipping trust controlled the White Star Line and who had selected Ismay as a company officer. Morgan had planned to join his associates on Titanic but canceled at the last minute when some business matters delayed him.

The wealthiest passenger was John Jacob Astor IV, heir to the Astor family fortune, who had made waves a year earlier by marrying 18-year-old Madeleine Talmadge Force, a young woman 29 years his junior, shortly after divorcing his first wife.

Other notable passengers included the elderly owner of Macy's, Isidor Straus, and his wife Ida; industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim, accompanied by his mistress, valet and chauffeur; and widow and heiress Margaret "Molly" Brown, who would earn her nickname " The Unsinkable Molly Brown " by helping to maintain calm and order while the lifeboats were being loaded and boosting the spirits of her fellow survivors.

The employees attending to this collection of First Class luminaries were mostly traveling Second Class, along with academics, tourists, journalists and others who would enjoy a level of service and accommodations equivalent to First Class on most other ships.

But by far the largest group of passengers was in Third Class: more than 700, exceeding the other two levels combined. Some had paid less than $20 to make the crossing. It was Third Class that was the major source of profit for shipping lines like White Star, and Titanic was designed to offer these passengers accommodations and amenities superior to those found in Third Class on any other ship of that era.

Titanic Sets Sail

Titanic's departure from Southampton on April 10 was not without some oddities. A small coal fire was discovered in one of her bunkers-an alarming but not uncommon occurrence on steamships of the day. Stokers hosed down the smoldering coal and shoveled it aside to reach the base of the blaze.

After assessing the situation, the captain and chief engineer concluded that it was unlikely it had caused any damage that could affect the hull structure, and the stokers were ordered to continue controlling the fire at sea.

According to a theory put forth by a small number of Titanic experts, the fire became uncontrollable after the ship left Southampton, forcing the crew to attempt a full-speed crossing; moving at such a fast pace, they were unable to avoid the fatal collision with the iceberg.

Another unsettling event took place when Titanic left the Southampton dock. As she got underway, she narrowly escaped a collision with the America Line's S.S. New York. Superstitious Titanic buffs sometimes point to this as the worst kind of omen for a ship departing on her maiden voyage.

The Titanic Strikes an Iceberg

On April 14, after four days of uneventful sailing, Titanic received sporadic reports of ice from other ships, but she was sailing on calm seas under a moonless, clear sky.

At about 11:30 p.m., a lookout saw an iceberg coming out of a slight haze dead ahead, then rang the warning bell and telephoned the bridge. The engines were quickly reversed and the ship was turned sharply-instead of making direct impact, Titanic seemed to graze along the side of the berg, sprinkling ice fragments on the forward deck.

Sensing no collision, the lookouts were relieved. They had no idea that the iceberg had a jagged underwater spur, which slashed a 300-foot gash in the hull below the ship's waterline.

By the time the captain toured the damaged area with Harland and Wolff's Thomas Andrews, five compartments were already filling with seawater, and the bow of the doomed ship was alarmingly pitched downward, allowing seawater to pour from one bulkhead into the neighboring compartment.

Andrews did a quick calculation and estimated that Titanic might remain afloat for an hour and a half, perhaps slightly more. At that point the captain, who had already instructed his wireless operator to call for help, ordered the lifeboats to be loaded.

Titanic's Lifeboats

A little more than an hour after contact with the iceberg, a largely disorganized and haphazard evacuation began with the lowering of the first lifeboat. The craft was designed to hold 65 people; it left with only 28 aboard.

Tragically, this was to be the norm: During the confusion and chaos during the precious hours before Titanic plunged into the sea, nearly every lifeboat would be launched woefully under-filled, some with only a handful of passengers.

In compliance with the law of the sea, women and children boarded the boats first; only when there were no women or children nearby were men permitted to board. Yet many of the victims were in fact women and children, the result of disorderly procedures that failed to get them to the boats in the first place.

Exceeding Andrews' prediction, Titanic stubbornly stayed afloat for close to three hours. Those hours witnessed acts of craven cowardice and extraordinary bravery.

Hundreds of human dramas unfolded between the order to load the lifeboats and the ship's final plunge: Men saw off wives and children, families were separated in the confusion and selfless individuals gave up their spots to remain with loved ones or allow a more vulnerable passenger to escape. In the end, 706 people survived the sinking of the Titanic.

Titanic Sinks

The ship's most illustrious passengers each responded to the circumstances with conduct that has become an integral part of the Titanic legend. Ismay, the White Star managing director, helped load some of the boats and later stepped onto a collapsible as it was being lowered. Although no women or children were in the vicinity when he abandoned ship, he would never live down the ignominy of surviving the disaster while so many others perished.

Thomas Andrews, Titanic's chief designer, was last seen in the First Class smoking room, staring blankly at a painting of a ship on the wall. Astor deposited his wife Madeleine into a lifeboat and, remarking that she was pregnant, asked if he could accompany her; refused entry, he managed to kiss her goodbye just before the boat was lowered away.

Although offered a seat on account of his age, Isidor Straus refused any special consideration, and his wife Ida would not leave her husband behind. The couple retired to their cabin and perished together.

Benjamin Guggenheim and his valet returned to their rooms and changed into formal evening dress; emerging onto the deck, he famously declared, "We are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen."

Molly Brown helped load the boats and finally was forced into one of the last to leave. She implored its crewmen to turn back for survivors, but they refused, fearing they would be swamped by desperate people trying to escape the icy seas.

Titanic, nearly perpendicular and with many of her lights still aglow, finally dove beneath the ocean's surface at about 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912. Throughout the morning, Cunard's Carpathia, after receiving Titanic's distress call at midnight and steaming at full speed while dodging ice floes all night, rounded up all of the lifeboats. They contained only 706 survivors.

Aftermath of the Titanic Catastrophe

At least five separate boards of inquiry on both sides of the Atlantic conducted comprehensive hearings on Titanic's sinking, interviewing dozens of witnesses and consulting with many maritime experts. Every conceivable subject was investigated, from the conduct of the officers and crew to the construction of the ship. Titanic conspiracy theories abounded.

While it has always been assumed that the ship sank as a result of the gash that caused the bulkhead compartments to flood, various other theories have emerged over the decades, including that the ship's steel plates were too brittle for the near-freezing Atlantic waters, that the impact caused rivets to pop and that the expansion joints failed, among others.

Technological aspects of the catastrophe aside, Titanic's demise has taken on a deeper, almost mythic, meaning in popular culture. Many view the tragedy as a morality play about the dangers of human hubris: Titanic's creators believed they had built an unsinkable ship that could not be defeated by the laws of nature.

This same overconfidence explains the electrifying impact Titanic's sinking had on the public when she was lost. There was widespread disbelief that the ship could not possibly have sunk, and, due to the era's slow and unreliable means of communication, misinformation abounded. Newspapers initially reported that the ship had collided with an iceberg but remained afloat and was being towed to port with everyone on board.

It took many hours for accurate accounts to become widely available, and even then people had trouble accepting that this paragon of modern technology could sink on her maiden voyage, taking more than 1,500 souls with her.

The ship historian John Maxtone-Graham has compared Titanic's story to the Challenger space shuttle disaster of 1986. In that case, the world reeled at the notion that one of the most sophisticated inventions ever created could explode into oblivion along with its crew. Both tragedies triggered a sudden collapse in confidence, revealing that we remain subject to human frailties and error, despite our hubris and a belief in technological infallibility.

Titanic Wreck

Efforts to locate the wreck of Titanic began soon after it sank. But technical limitations-as well as the vastness of the North Atlantic search area-made finding it extremely difficult.

Finally, in 1985, a joint U.S.-French expedition located the wreck of the RMS Titanic. The doomed ship was discovered about 400 miles east of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic, some 13,000 feet below the surface.

Subsequent explorations have found that the wreck is in relatively good condition, with many objects on the ship-jewelry, furniture, shoes, machinery and other items-are still intact.

Since its discovery, the wreck has been explored numerous times by manned and unmanned submersibles-including the submersible Titan, which imploded during what would have been its third dive to the wreck in June 2023.

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The Titanic was a luxury British steamship that sank in the early hours of April 15, 1912 after striking an iceberg, leading to the deaths of more than 1,500 passengers and crew. Read about the timeline of its sinking, the many lives lost and those who survived.

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Topical Press Agency / Hulton Archive / Getty Images

March 18, 1925, 695 killed
A nearly four-hour twister at 62 m.p.h. (100 k.p.h.) first touched down northwest of Ellington, Mo., and then set records for speed and path length as it etched 219 miles (352 km) of devastation at a width of three-quarters of a mile. The tornado flew through Illinois - destruction was the worst in the town of Gorham - and Indiana, wiping out a series of mining towns along the way. Included in the tragic death toll were hundreds of students either on their way home from school or in one of three school buildings locked in the tornado's trap.

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After Moore, TIME takes a look back at 10 other deadly tornadoes that have wreaked havoc throughout U.S. history.

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The ghoulish, ongoing tornado storm in the midwest comes a few days before the anniversary of the Joplin, Missouri, tornado disaster, which leveled 25 percent of the city and killed nearly 200 people on May 22, 2011. However, memories can prove short-even for events like Joplin and this week's mile-wide twisters. In 1925, the worst tornado disaster in history hit the upper Midwest. The Tri-State Tornado still holds records for spending the longest time on the ground, where it left a swath 219 miles long. It killed nearly 700 people.

"You know, I can't remember that it lightninged and thundered, but it's bound to have. All I remember is how dark it kept gettin', and the wind, you know?"

Few survivors of the Tri-State disaster remain-a teenager during the event would be 100 years old today. But just before Christmas, 1999, an official from the National Weather Service office in Paducah, Kentucky, interviewed his grandmother, who had been four years old at the time and visiting her own grandmother at a family farm in Indiana when the storm hit.

Lela Hartman's take on the storm is colored by a long-ago memory of an event witnessed by a small child. But her belief at the time-she would have been about 70 when the interview was conducted-that technology would solve the tornado problem is telling. Last April, numerous reports noted a study in Iowa that found survivors of twisters tended to be more optimistic afterward. The investigators chalked this up to either of two common reactions. One was a belief in a coin-flip fallacy: that if a statistically improbable event like a direct tornado strike happened, it would have lower odds of happening again. Nature had taken its best shot and missed, and that was that, goes this belief. The other belief was that getting through a tornado represented a test of resourcefulness and correct disaster response by each person who had made it to shelter. Having passed one trial by fire (or wind, in this case) the person would be well-equipped to survive any future events.

Hartman doesn't talk about any of that, however. In a fantastic retelling of what must have been a terrifying day, she talks about the sky, her grandmother's internal disaster response barometer, and the failure of many people to respond correctly, despite being longtime residents of a tornado-prone region. Mostly, she seems convinced that eventually we'll just avoid the whole problem, telling her interviewer ("Presley" in the transcript, her grandson) that we'll soon be figuring out how to turn twisters off remotely. Here's Hartman enthusing about severe weather warnings:

HARTMAN: I think it's great. I-I'm amazed that people are that smart, puttin' up with all this, you know? [Of] course, that's in everything. It's not just in weather. We have got smart people ... on this Earth, and they've brought us a long way in medicine and weather and.... It's too bad that we don't have a turnkey where, when we see somethin' like this happenin', we can just shut it off, you know? Maybe one of these days, somebody will come up with one.

PRESLEY: That's true, and that would be very interesting wouldn't it?

HARTMAN: Yeah. Where you could turn the winds in another direction, or calm 'em down, or something.

PRESLEY: But there's a lot to be said for research and development when it comes to that.

HARTMAN: Oh yeah. They've gone a long way.

PRESLEY: They have, and we still have a-especially in meteorology and in some other sciences-they still have a long way to go, but....

HARTMAN: But they've gone a long way. ... 'Cause they didn't have that kinda thing ... back when this-well, I still want to call it a cyclone, but I guess I'll call it a tornado-happened. We didn't have- you were your weather forecaster. You watched the sky.

PRESLEY: This one was kind of ... interesting, though, because it actually caught a lot of even farmers by surprise because it was so unusual.

HARTMAN: Well, it was. ... It was such a pretty day that day. ... And for March, that was a little bit unusual in itself. But then, after noon, when it began to turn dark and.... You know, I can't remember that it lightninged and thundered, but it's bound to have. All I remember is how dark it kept gettin', and the wind, you know? And, and I, even I, then was scared. I wanted to go to the cellar. But there wasn't a one of us would go until Grandma would go. And she wasn't about to go. But she finally, she finally did. I think she finally decided that something was about to give.

PRESLEY: She had probably been through so many storms, that she was just gonna stand out there and ride it out. But there's something about this one that told her that....

HARTMAN: She'd better....

PRESLEY: She'd better take shelter.

HARTMAN: She'd better go. Yes.

PRESLEY: Well, is there anything else that you'd like to add?

HARTMAN: Well, not really. Just that I hope we don't ever have another one.

PRESLEY: Aw, I hope not, but it's inevitable. Someday we will.

HARTMAN: Well probably. But with all the technology that you guys have, maybe it won't, you know? Maybe there'll be something that you'll have control. You know?

The rest of the conversation is at the Paducah station's 1925 memorial page, here.

In a case of art predicting life, a novel about the Tri-State disaster, Kate Southwood's Falling to Earth, appeared last month to positive reviews.

Political news around tornadoes is less encouraging. In February, the U.S. Department of Commerce, which overseas the weather service, told the Senate Appropriations committee that mandated sequester budget cuts could delay the launch of a new weather satellite, the GOES-R, by two to three years. Once aloft, the spacecraft is designed to provide data for the nation's severe weather warning system, among other functions.

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A Survivor of the Deadliest Tornado in U.S. History Tells Her Tale

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At 70, Lela Hartman believed we would one day use technology to prevent disasters like the Tri-State Tornado she witnessed as a small child. Are we getting any closer?

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On March 18, 1925 a dark "smokey fog" touched down approximately three miles northwest of Ellington, Missouri. It would become known as the Tri-State Tornado. By all accounts the Tri-State Tornado was one for the record books.

The Tri-State Tornado is currently the U.S. record holder for longest tornado track (219 miles), most deaths in a single tornado (695), and most injuries in a single tornado (2027). While it occurred before the modern record, it is considered by all accounts to be a F5/EF5 Tornado. It crossed the three states, thus it's namesake "Tri-State," tearing through thirteen counties of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana. It crossed over and destroyed or significantly damaged nine towns and numerous smaller villages.

The track of this tornado has been lost to the 89 years of growth of vegetation and development by humans. One map, done by Wilson and Changnon in 1971, seems to provide the most accurate path of this tornado. However, in searching for an electronic or digitized copy of this map I could not find one. I decided to re-create their map in geographic software as seen below.

The resulting map perhaps shows why this tornado was so deadly. First off was the speed of the tornado. The average speed across it's life span was an astonishing 62 miles per hour, with forward speeds at times reaching 73 mph. Also worth noting is that the tornado followed a slight topographical ridge with a series of mining towns perfectly aligned the path. Despite the staggering death toll and thousands of injuries, the stories that have emerged from the are quite astonishing. Using the map above, we can see where some of these stories came from.

In Annapolis, Mo., the day was quite hazy with just a few thunderclaps in the distance, then at 1:30 p.m. the "smokey fog" came down from above the small Ozark hills town. It came and left so quickly that nobody knew what had really happened. The only logical explanation was a twister of some sort. 90 percent of the town was destroyed. When the tornado approached the town of Beihle, Mo. a double tornado was reported along a three mile stretch. It is unclear whether this phenomenon was a satellite tornado around a parent tornado, or if the old tornado was dying and a new one forming. Regardless, the damage path went on.

Crossing the Mississippi river, the tornado then struck the town of Gorham, Il. Gorham was a town of about 500 people and of those 500, 37 were killed and 250 injured. One notable effect in Gorham was the grass being torn from the ground in a gully on the east of town. The next town was Murphysboro. Eugene Porter reported the tornado to be "about a mile wide". The town of Murphysboro suffered heavy losses, with 234 casualties reported along with 623 injuries. About 100 square blocks of the town were destroyed along, with another 70 by a fire after the tornado.

Perhaps the most astonishing show of power came from the next town in line, DeSoto, Il. Trees were snapped off at knee height and stumps then ripped out of the ground. No structure was left standing in the tornado's path. Of the 69 people killed in DeSoto, 33 were killed in a school.

Next up, West Frankfort was a mining town, and as such most of the men worked in the mines. When the electricity went out, the miners went to the surface to see what the problem was. The miners came to the surface of a destroyed landscape. Most of the 148 deaths and 400 injuries in West Frankfort were women and children given the men were in the mine.

A man in Parrish, Il. survived the tornado by clinging to a railroad track while the town was destroyed. 46 people died and at least 100 were injured here. Between Gorham and Parrish, 541 lives were taken.

The tornado continued northeast, and over the next hour mostly farms and an occasional school house or general store were destroyed. Once into Indiana, the town of Griffin was destroyed, followed by the south side of Princeton.

In Princeton, residents saw a "blackness" move across the south side of town, no one in north Princeton knew or even guessed that the other southern half of the town had been destroyed until injuries and bodies started showing at the hospital. 45 people were killed and 152 injured there. The tornado then weakened and dissipated as it took a more northeasterly direction, finally dissipating just southwest of the town of Petersburg, In.

Total time on the ground of the Tri-State tornado was 3 hours and 30 minutes. During that time, it traveled 219 miles and killed 695 people. Most of them in Illinois.

The meteorological conditions surrounding the tornado are also just as interesting as the tornado itself. The residences in the fully destroyed town of Gorham, Illinois recalled the morning being rainy and drizzly, with dark and gloomy skies and little wind. For anybody who follows severe weather, this is seen as an oddity. Often, areas that see tornadoes are at least partly sunny and windy in the morning, as moist air runs along the surface and the sunshine heats it, only to be exploded into massive thunderheads in the afternoon.

Robert Maddox, et al. did a fantastic analysis of the meteorological conditions on the day of the tornado (full report). What they found was that the tornado ran along what is called the triple point, the intersection between the warm front, cold front, and occluded front, near the center of low pressure. The image below from their report shows the position of the tornado relative to the surface features.

Ending on a more lighthearted note, there are many fascinating stories that came from this tornado. Here are just a few, taken from Peter S. Felknor's Book, Tri-State Tornado:

In West Frankfort, Il. a farmer found a barber chair from some other town, and a bond - that was in a safe to begin with - was found 125 miles away and later mailed back. A house was also left standing while the trees surrounding it were cut off at the trunk or uprooted.

A man in Griffin, IN reported that he grabbed a door-handle and the house blew away, leaving the door handle with him.

A popcorn man in Murphysboro, Il. was reportedly tossed up in the air "to the height of a one story building" then set back down a block away. His popcorn stand moved three feet and was still on it's wheels.

Sources:
Illinois Tornadoes ; Wilson and Changnon, (1971)
Tri-State Tornado, Peter S. Felknor, (1992)
Grazulis, Thomas P - Significant Tornadoes 1680-1991, (1993)
Meteorological Analyses of the Tri-State Tornado Event of March 1925, Maddox et. al , (2013)

Further Reading:
Storm-Stalker, The Tri-State Tornado, 2013 (lots of good pictures of damage)
Detailed information from NWS Paducah

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The Tri-State Tornado of 1925 - U.S. Tornadoes

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On March 18, 1925 a dark "smokey fog" touched down approximately three miles northwest of Ellington, Missouri. It would become known as the Tri-State Tornado. By all accounts the Tri-State Tornado was one for the record books. The Tri-State Tornado is currently the U.S.

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The 10 deadliest US tornadoes on record | CNN

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Tornadoes are capable of tremendous destruction and can have devastating consequences. They are most common in the Central Plains and southeastern US, but they have been reported in all 50 states, according to the National Weather Service. Tornadoes kill an average of 60 people a year in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.