April 15, 2020

Today, April 15, is an important day on the calendar, and it is known for some momentous events in history. To many people in the United States, April 15 brings to mind taxes, as it is generally the final day income taxes can be filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Two other April 15 events do not brighten the mood: the U.S. President Abraham Lincoln died on that day in 1865; and the ocean liner Titanic sank on April 15, 1912. But a number of other events, including the births of the artists Henry James and Leonardo da Vinci and Jackie Robinson’s breaking the racial barrier in Major League Baseball (MLB), make April 15 a not altogether gloomy day.

The U.S. President Abraham Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, after being shot by an assassin the night before. Credit: Library of Congress

On the evening of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln attended a performance of the comedy Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. At 10:22 p.m., a shot rang through the crowded house. John Wilkes Booth, a Southern sympathizer and well-known actor, had shot the president in the head from the rear of the presidential box. Lincoln was carried unconscious to a boarding house across the street. The president died there at 7:22 a.m. on April 15.

The “unsinkable” ocean liner Titanic was believed to be the safest ship afloat. But on April 15, 1912, Titanic sank after striking an iceberg. Credit: © AP/Wide World

Just before midnight on April 14, 1912, the British ocean liner RMS (Royal Mail Ship) Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean. The disaster occurred on the ship’s maiden (first) voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City. The ship struck the iceberg at about 11:40 p.m. and sank bout two and a half hours later, on April 15. The huge ocean liner broke in half and sank into the icy water, killing more than 1,500 people.

On Feb. 3, 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States authorized Congress to levy a federal income tax. The amendment allows Congress to levy an income tax on individuals and businesses without dividing it equally among the states or basing it on the U.S. census. The deadline for paying taxes from the previous year was originally March 1, and then March 15. In 1954, to give people a little more time to deal with the often complicated burden, the tax deadline settled on April 15.

Jackie Robinson beame the first African American to play modern Major League Baseball when he debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. Credit: © MLB Photos/Getty Images

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American to play in the major leagues since the 1880’s. Robinson’s impact on segregation in sports went far beyond the Dodgers. After baseball desegregated, other professional sports quickly followed, and a number of previously segregated hotels and restaurants began to admit blacks.

Aside from Leonardo da Vinci (1452) and Henry James (1843), notable April 15 birthdays include the U.S. painter Charles Willson Peale (1741); the U.S. Blues singer Bessie Smith (1894); the first African American mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington (1922); the Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi (1978); the Canadian-American actor Seth Rogan (1982); and the British actress Emma Watson (1990).

April 14, 2017

An unusually high number of dangerous icebergs have drifted into busy shipping lanes of the North Atlantic Ocean over the past month, prompting warnings from the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) and other international agencies. More than 450 icebergs, many large enough to sink a ship, have been sighted in the past weeks, about five times the average for this time of year. Ships are warned to sail well south of their normal course to avoid the huge iceberg field.

Icebergs like these are crowding shipping lanes in the North Atlantic Ocean. Credit: © Thinkstock

An iceberg is a huge mass of ice that has calved (broken off) from a glacier or ice shelf and is floating in water. Icebergs are much larger below the water than above it, and they can pose a great danger to ships that come too close. The hard ice can easily tear open the steel hull of a ship that strikes it. At least one cargo ship has already reported a close encounter with an iceberg this month.

Click to view larger image
Icebergs form where chunks of ice break away from a glacier as it flows into the sea. The sun and wind melt the top of an iceberg. The bottom, which is under water, melts much more slowly. As the top melts away, leaving the bottom hidden beneath the surface, the iceberg becomes extremely dangerous to ships. Credit: WORLD BOOK diagrams by Marion Pahl

The unusual iceberg hazard in the North Atlantic recalls the conditions that led to the sinking of the Titanic on April 14, 1912—105 years ago today. The Titanic sank after colliding with a large iceberg in the same region. More than 1,500 people, including many wealthy and famous passengers, went down with the ship.

The Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 14, 1912, and sank within hours. Credit: © AP/Wide World

The USCG International Ice Patrol, which was created in the aftermath of the Titanic disaster, uses satellites to track large icebergs in the region. The agency has observed that the icebergs clogging the North Atlantic shipping lanes today mostly calved from glaciers in Greenland. Many climate scientists think the dramatic increase in icebergs may be a result of climate change. Warmer conditions than normal have weakened ice fields in Greenland, leading to an increased rate of iceberg calving. Strong winds and currents then push the icebergs about, causing some to drift into the heavily trafficked shipping lanes.

July 24, 2015

In Chicago, on July 24, 1915, nearly 850 people died after the luxury tour boat Eastland overturned in the Chicago River. In this image, survivors and rescuers stand on the hull of the overturned steamship. Chicago Daily News/Chicago Historical Society/Library of Congress

Today marks the 100th anniversary of a maritime tragedy, the Eastland disaster. People have heard of the sinking of the Lusitania, which happened in May 1915 and left 1,201 dead. They are still more familiar with the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, which killed an estimated 1,500 people. But the Eastland, which capsized while still tied to the dock, in shallow water some 20 feet (6 meters) from the bank of the Chicago River, killed nearly 850 people and is largely forgotten.

The Western Electric Company had chartered five Great Lakes ships, including the Eastland. The ships were to take Western Electric workers from downtown Chicago to Michigan City, Indiana, for the annual company picnic. The thousands of workers who made telephones for this company were poor, many of them were recent immigrants, and this event was the highlight of their year.

The Eastland had been launched in 1903 and was originally meant to carry 500 passengers in addition to goods. It had been refitted several times to hold more passengers, and on the morning of July 24, some 2,500 people boarded the Eastland and were waiting for it to set out. The ship had had problems before with listing (tilting to one side or another). The ship was top-heavy, and crew members kept it upright when in port by filling tanks in the ship’s hull with water for ballast. On July 24, the Eastland was carrying its maximum capacity of passengers.  A large number of people were crowded onto the open upper decks. It was chilly and raining on that day, however, so many women with small children headed below deck to get out of the weather.

The ship began to list. Crew members struggled to fill tanks and right the ship, but it suddenly capsized. Safety measures put into effect after the sinking of the Titanic may have actually caused the Eastland to be even more unstable. The weight of so many life boats on the upper decks only made the ship more top heavy.

With the sudden capsizing, some people on the upper decks were thrown into the water and saved. Others on the upper decks were able to stay upright and walk on the ship’s hull to safety. Many people in the rooms below deck were trapped, however, leading to a large number of children among the dead. Although nearby boats responded almost immediately in the crisis and passersby on the river tried to save victims as well, the total death count was huge.

Survivors of the Eastland disaster climb onto the tugboat Kenosha from the hull of the overturned Eastland. Chicago Daily News/Chicago Historical Society/Library of Congress

The poet Carl Sandburg worked as a journalist at the time of the Eastland disaster and covered the story. In his poem The Eastland (not published until 1993), he wrote:

Women and kids, wet hair and scared faces,
The coroner hauling truckloads of the dripping dead
To the Second Regiment armory where doctors waited
With useless pulmotors and the eight hundred motionless stiff
Lay ready for their relatives to pick them out on the floor
And take them home and call up the undertaker. . .

April 14, 2012

On this day in 1912 the mighty ocean liner Titanic hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic and later sank, resulting in the loss of 1,500 lives. The ship, the largest and most costly ever built at that time, had been declared unsinkable. Yet it did sink, and on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City. Blame for the disaster has been placed on everybody and everything, from the ship’s captain to substandard coal and even flawed rivets. Now, 100 years after the liner broke apart and went down, scientists are proposing that two rare states of nature may have played major roles in the catastrophe. (The Titanic hit the iceberg at about 11:40 p.m. on the 14th and sank approximatley 2.5 hours later on the 15th.)

The Titanic sank on April 15, 1912. (Courtesy of AP/Wide World)

Researchers from Texas State University–San Marcos and Sky & Telescope magazine have discovered that Earth came unusually close to the sun and moon between December 1911 and February 1912. This configuration intensified their gravitational pull, resulting in record high tides. The researchers suggested that the high tides unleashed masses of icebergs from along the coastlines of Labrador and Newfoundland and set them adrift into the North Atlantic. “We don’t claim that our idea is conclusive,” notes Donald Olson, a physicist at Texas State. . . . [But] “we found there had been remarkable tidal events around the globe–in England and New Zealand.” Contemporary newspaper accounts back his claim. Soon after the disaster, The New York Times quoted U.S. officials as saying that the winter had produced “an enormously large crop of icebergs.”

Scientists believe that the Titanic hit an iceberg that broke off from Newfoundland and Labrador and drifted into its path. (World Book Map)

In Titanic: A Very Deceiving Night, Titanic historian Tim Maltin proposes that these very icy waters may have produced an unusual type of mirage that masked the size and location of  icebergs. Mirages occur at sea when cold air bends light rays downward. This causes images to become distorted, rather like the wavy reflections in a funhouse mirror. Matlin suggests that such warped images may have confused the men on watch aboard the Titanic about the size and distance of the iceberg.

Perhaps because of the luxury of the ship and the number of millionaires who went down with it–including real estate tycoon John Jacob Astor and Macy’s Department Store owner Isidor Straus–the Titanic has never lost its allure.  A Broadway musical, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, was written about the colorful life of one Titanic survivor. A number of films have also been made about the disaster. The most recent, Titanic (1997), was the second-most commercially successful film of all time. The writer and director, James Cameron, won an Academy Award as best director for Titanic, which also won 10 other awards, including best picture.

Additional World Book articles:

• Optics
• Archaeology 1997 (Back in Time article)
• Motion pictures 1997 (Back in Time article)
• Theater 1960 (Back in Time article)

March 29, 2012

On March 25, Canadian-born filmmaker and undersea explorer James Cameron became the first person to dive solo to the deepest-known part of the world’s ocean. Cameron, who has directed such films as Aliens (1985), Titanic (1997), and Avatar (2009), descended to a canyon called the Mariana Trench, which lies nearly 7 miles (11 kilometers) below the surface of the western Pacific Ocean. The area, the lowest-known point of Earth’s crust, is located near the United States Territory of Guam.

James Cameron became the first person to dive solo to the deepest part of the ocean. (Courtesy Jason LaVeris, FilmMagic/Getty Images)

Cameron reached the Mariana Trench in a submersible called Deepsea Challenger. Submersibles are research vessels built to withstand the crushing pressures and near-freezing temperatures found in ocean depths. Deepsea Challenger is a 26-foot- (7.9-meter-) high capsule that descends upright.

According to Cameron, he found the seafloor to be “devoid of sunlight, devoid of any heat, any warmth.” He reported that it was “completely featureless and uniform” and that the only organisms he saw were tiny, shrimp-like arthropods (animals with jointed legs and no backbone). Cameron planned to create a television special for National Geographic and a 3D film for commercial release about his journey. Before Cameron, the only persons to descend into the Mariana Trench were U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and the late Swiss oceanographer Jacques Piccard, who explored the trench together in the submersible Trieste in 1960.

Although Cameron is best known as a filmmaker, he has made more than 70 ocean dives over the years, including a dozen during the filming of Titanic, a movie about the sinking in 1912 of the largest and most luxurious ocean liner of the day. The Titanic struck an iceberg during its maiden voyage from England to the United States, causing the deaths of more than 1,500 people. The exact whereabouts of the ship remained unknown for decades until a team of French and American scientists led by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert D. Ballard found the wreck in the north Atlantic near Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, in 1985 at a depth of about 2.4 miles (3.8 kilometers).

Additional World Book articles:

• Deep into the Past (a special report)
• Deep sea
• Archaeology 1985 (a Back in Time article)
• Ocean 1960 (a Back in Time article)