Titanic sinks

1912NotableContested

More than 1,500 die. New maritime safety rules follow.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First stars ignite → Supernovae seed heavy elements → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → Apes split from monkeys → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Natufian villages → Oldest known bread → Agriculture begins → Irrigation → Uruk and the first cities → Cylinder seals → Writing (cuneiform) → Babylonian mathematics → Babylonian astronomical diaries → Thales and natural philosophy → Trial and death of Socrates → Plato's Academy → Aristotle's Lyceum → Alexander's conquests → Alexandria founded → Library of Alexandria → House of Wisdom → Al-Khwarizmi and algebra → Fibonacci's Liber Abaci → Bills of exchange → Medici Bank → Double-entry bookkeeping → Dutch East India Company and first stock exchange → Bank of England → Industrial Revolution begins → Bessemer steel process → Titanic sinks

Contested history

Consensus: The Titanic struck an iceberg on 14 April 1912 and sank within three hours.

Iceberg collision, with too few lifeboatsEstablished

Confirmed by survivors and the wreck.

Weak rivets and a coal-bunker fire contributedDebated by scholars

Metallurgy tests support weak rivets; the fire's effect is disputed.

It was secretly swapped with its sister ship Olympic for insuranceDebunked

Titanic's hull number 401 has been photographed on the wreck.

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BookWalter Lord

A Night to Remember ↗