44 secrets you never knew about the Titanic, which sank 112 years ago

American silent film actress Dorothy Gibson was one of the approximately 700 survivors of the tragedy.

Upon arriving in New York City unscathed, she immediately began filming "Saved From the Titanic," the first film to depict the events of the sinking.

According to the Los Angeles Times, it was released in May 1912, a month after the crash. She is famous for wearing the same clothes and shoes in the movie as she had worn during the actual sinking, according to Atlas Obscura.

While the film was successful, it exists only in memories now, much like one Jack Dawson. The only known print of the film was destroyed in a fire, reported IB Times.

According to IMDb's trivia page, Beesley was on the set of "A Night to Remember," which is considered the most accurate of all Titanic films, at least according to the BBC.

He reportedly tried to jump into the scene depicting the ship's sinking, in order to symbolically go down with the ship. Legend has it that director Roy Ward Baker refused, as it would have been a union violation and could have halted filming.

Beesley was a survivor from the second class, and he wrote a memoir about his experience entitled "The Loss of the SS Titanic."

Even though, by all accounts, the third-class accommodations on the Titanic were much better than those on an average ship, they were still pretty rough.

The total number of third-class passengers was at least 709, according to Encyclopedia Titanica, and they all had to share two bathtubs, reported ABC News.

Roger Bricoux, the Titanic's cello player, was just 21 years old when he perished during the ship's sinking.

But Bricoux wasn't officially declared dead until 2000, though all of the musicians died on April 15, 1912. The French army even called him a deserter when he failed to show up to serve in World War I, according to his profile on Encyclopedia Titanica.

The Association Française du Titanic (French Association of the Titanic) worked to clear his name and officially put Bricoux to rest, but it didn't succeed until 88 years after the Titanic sank.

They have been called heroes, and they played music for more than two hours after hitting the iceberg, the BBC reported.

According to The Telegraph, the ship's lookouts, Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee, didn't have access to binoculars during the journey and therefore couldn't see very far.

The ship's second officer was replaced at the last minute and forgot to hand off the key to the locker that housed the ship's binoculars.

The key resurfaced at auction in 2007, where it was sold for over $90,000, reported Scottish newspaper The Herald.

According to the official 1912 inquiry findings, The Telegraph reported, only 37 seconds elapsed between actually seeing the iceberg, calling downstairs, and deciding what course of action to take.

Fleet was the lookout who called out the now-famous words, "Iceberg, right ahead." He survived the sinking but tragically went on to take his own life in 1965, after the death of his wife, according to his Encyclopedia Titanica profile.

On the centennial anniversary of the Titanic's sinking, a prankster removed a memorial wreath from his gravestone and replaced it with a pair of binoculars and a note apologizing for the lateness of the binoculars, reported The Daily Mail.

According to National Geographic, eight men died during the construction of the ship, but only five of their names are known: Samuel Scott, John Kelly, William Clarke, James Dobbin, and Robert Murphy. A plaque memorializing the eight men in Belfast was unveiled in 2012.

Astor was not just the richest man on the Titanic but widely believed to be the richest man in the world at the time of his death. He was worth an estimated $150 million, or $4.5 billion in today's dollars, according to CNBC.

According to Biography, Astor was on the ship returning home from a months-long honeymoon with his new wife, Madeleine Talmage Force, who, at 18 years old, was 28 years younger than him.

The extended honeymoon was actually a way to escape society's gossip — Astor had just been divorced within two years of his new marriage, which was relatively unheard of back then, Mental Floss reported.

Astor's body was one of the few that was recovered in the Atlantic Ocean after the ship went down, The New York Times reported at the time.

In the race to publish a headline about the disaster, numerous newspapers gave families and loved ones false hope about the sinking of the Titanic. As a Library of Virginia project showed, The Daily Mail declared "no lives lost" while the Reno Evening Gazette said that "passengers are safe."

The Belfast Telegraph claimed "no danger of loss of life."

Some American newspapers were able to take advantage of the time difference, making their headlines more accurate. The New York Times, for example, ran the headline "Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg; 866 Rescued by Carpathia, Probably 1,250 Perish; Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Noted Names Missing."

Depending on how you look at it, stewardess and nurse Violet Jessop is the luckiest — or unluckiest — woman alive. She survived the sinking of both the Titanic and the Britannic.

Jessop was just 25 when she survived the sinking of the Titanic. She was instructed to get into a lifeboat while the ship was going down to show women that the boats were safe.

Undeterred by this maritime tragedy, Jessop began working on the Britannic, according to the Belfast Telegraph (dubbed the Titanic 2 by the media), until it came across a mine that had been planted by a German U-boat in 1916.

That ship also sank, and Jessop escaped again, but this time with a serious head injury that would affect her for the rest of her life.

For one couple, these rumors even caused divorce.

Dickinson and Helen Bishop were granted a divorce in 1916, four years after the Titanic went down. Helen claimed that her husband was cruel and a drunk, according to M Live, but their relationship was also plagued by rumors that Dickinson had dressed up as a woman in order to escape the ship.

These claims were explained further in the 2012 book "Shadow of the Titanic: The Extraordinary Stories of Those Who Survived."

In his official testimony during the US Senate Inquiry regarding the Titanic, Dickinson claimed that there had been no official order allowing only women and children to get on lifeboats, according to the Titanic Inquiry Project.

Bishop's not the only man to have been accused of disguising himself as a woman — J. Bruce Ismay, William Carter, and William T. Sloper were all dogged by the same rumors throughout their lives, according to fact-checking site Snopes.

The Titanic's lights only went out when she finally went under, due to the tireless efforts of the ship's engineers, who stayed behind to keep the electricity and pumps running while the ship sank. They also kept the radio running, which put out distress signals until minutes before the ship sank, according to The Guardian.

Not one of the 35 engineers survived.

According to the Daily Echo, at "one Northam school, 120 of the 240 pupils lost their father" — Northam is a neighborhood in Southampton. Most of the crew was from the city, and only 213 crewmembers survived, while 686 died.

The Daily Echo also reported that one widow, who had just given birth to twins, found out her husband had died and died of shock herself.

The Navratil brothers Edmond and Michel were just 2 and 4 years old, respectively, when the Titanic sank. They were with their father, Michel Sr., who had kidnapped them.

Separated from their mother, he decided to take them to America in the hopes that his estranged wife would follow, and that they could start a new life in the New World, according to NPR.

Their father put them on a lifeboat, and he was never seen again.

The two spoke no English, so they were taken in by a French-speaking survivor, Margaret Hays, until the authorities could locate their mother. She found them a month after the disaster, thanks to their faces being plastered on newspapers the world over.

In the movie, Benjamin Guggenheim refuses a life vest and states, "We are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down as gentlemen."

While it seems almost too cinematic to be true, the real Benjamin Guggenheim actually was prepared to go down like a gentleman, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

A New York Times article published in April 1912 that was reprinted by Encyclopedia Titanica reported that he had asked a steward to tell his wife in New York City, "I've done my best in doing my duty." He went down with the ship.

Watch the scene based on Guggenheim's final moments here.

According to the 2011 book "Titanic Love Stories," there were at least 13 couples celebrating their honeymoons on the ship.

"Futility," a novella written by American author Morgan Robertson, was published in 1898, 14 years before the Titanic set sail. It was centered on the sinking of a fictional ship called the Titan.

There's an eerie number of similarities between the ship's sinking in "Futility" and the Titanic in real life.

First, the ship names are just two letters off (Titan vs Titanic). They were also said to be almost the same size, and both sank in April, due to an iceberg. Both ships had been described as unsinkable, and, sadly, both had just over the legally required amount of lifeboats, which were nowhere near enough.

The author was accused of being a psychic, but he explained that the uncanny similarities were simply a product of his extensive knowledge, saying, "I know what I'm writing about, that's all."

As the BBC reported, multiple bad judgment calls led to the Californian not helping the Titanic: The ship's radio was allegedly shut off for the night when the Titanic hit the iceberg, and when the captain was awakened by the flares the Titanic had been setting off, he assumed that they were just fireworks.

By the time the SOS messages finally came through, it was too late.

However, the Californian wasn't long for this world either — it sank in November 1915, torpedoed by a German submarine during World War I, according to the book "British Merchant Ships Sunk by U-boats in World War One," published in 2006.

Abott was on the deck until the very end with her two sons, and all three went into the water with the ship.

Tragically, her two sons were washed away by the ocean, but Abott was eventually pulled into a lifeboat that was rescued by the Carpathia, according to the 2012 guide "The Titanic For Dummies."

Joughin is briefly but memorably portrayed in "Titanic" as chugging a flask of alcohol before entering the water. This is based on reality — according to reports, Joughin grabbed two bottles of whiskey as the ship went down, as written in the 2015 book "Fascinating Footnotes From History."

According to the Titanic Inquiry Project, Joughin reported that he survived in the frigid North Atlantic for at least two hours.

According to NPR, the menu included "oysters, filet mignon, poached salmon, chicken Lyonnaise, foie gras, roasted pigeon, lamb with mint sauce, and Punch Romaine, a palate-cleansing ice flavored with oranges and drenched in Champagne."

And that's just for first class — the ship's cooks had to prepare food for second- and third-class passengers, plus the crew, too.

The Titanic was estimated to have cost around $7.5 million in 1912, reported the History Channel, which, according to the US Department of Labor's inflation calculator, would be around $231 million.

The 1997 blockbuster's budget was $200 million, or around $376 million today, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The Titanic's wreckage was discovered in 1985, during a secret Cold War Navy mission to locate two sunken nuclear submarines, which explorer Robert Ballard revealed to National Geographic over two decades later.

"The Navy never expected me to find the Titanic, and so when that happened, they got really nervous because of the publicity," Ballard said. "But people were so focused on the legend of the Titanic they never connected the dots."

There were at least 15 witnesses who swore on the record that they had seen the Titanic break into two pieces before completely sinking beneath the waves. But they were ignored — the official US inquiry stated that the ship sank intact, as the New York Daily News reported.

How the Titanic sank was disputed for 73 years until it was finally found on the ocean floor, broken in two.

According to ABC News, UNESCO and scientists think the whole wreck could vanish by 2030, thanks to bacteria eating away at it.

James Cameron, director/writer/producer/editor of "Titanic," wrote about his experiences touring the ship's wreckage for National Geographic. He shared that "in Henry Harper's D Deck cabin, his bowler hat remains in the ruins of his closet, right where he left it."

According to his entry in Encyclopedia Titanica, Hays was president of the Grand Trunk and Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Companies, which would later become the Canadian National Railway, and was thus well-versed in the technological advancements in transportation.

Survivor Colonel Archibald Gracie Hays pondered if continuing to build bigger and faster ships was wise, according to a reprinted article from the Toronto Daily Star that was reprinted in Encyclopedia Titanica.

According to Gracie, Hays said "the White Star, the Cunard, and Hamburg-American Lines are devoting their attention and ingenuity in vying with one another to attain the supremacy in luxurious ships and in making speed records. The time will come soon when this will be checked by some appalling disaster."

According to Encyclopedia Titanica, just four women from first class died during the disaster.

Isham reportedly jumped out of a lifeboat once she realized that she couldn't take her Great Dane with her, according to PETA.

It's been speculated that a woman found in the water with her arms wrapped around her large dog was Isham, though it's impossible to know for sure.

A child's body was recovered from the water five days after the Titanic went down. Rescuers were so moved by the little boy that they buried him in a grave in Nova Scotia memorializing the 53 children that died.

The body was misidentified three times before he was finally identified as Sidney Goodwin when his shoes were donated to a museum and DNA tested, the Toronto Star reported.

Goodwin's tomb, marked with a headstone that says "unknown child," has remained untouched. His family stated, "The tombstone of the unknown child represents all of the children who perished on the Titanic, and we left it that way," reported LiveScience.

Millvina Dean was just 2 months old when she was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat. She was the last living survivor of the Titanic and died in 2009, at age 97.

After the sinking of the Titanic, Brown became a full-fledged activist, according to Biography. She was a vocal supporter of the suffrage movement, worked with the Red Cross during World War I, and even ran for Senate, though she didn't win.

Masabumi Hosono was originally called the "Lucky Japanese Boy" by American media, but he was soon labeled a coward for getting on a lifeboat, which many considered primarily for women and children, reported AV Club.

He was called dishonorable in his home country and was accused of dressing up as a woman in order to gain access to a boat (there's no proof of this).

After "Titanic" was released in 1997, Hosono's family published a letter he had written to his wife describing the sinking of the ship — explaining he had been ready to die until a crew member called out for two more people, and he hopped in with another man.

According to a survivor's testimony, it was completely out of the ordinary for a Sunday to pass without a lifeboat drill, the Toronto Star reported. April 14, 1912, was the last Sunday the Titanic would ever see, and the day of the sinking (technically, the Titanic sank on April 15 at 2 a.m.).

It's unclear why the drill never happened.

This photo was taken on April 15, 1912, the morning after the Titanic crashed, from a ship called the SS Prinz Adalbert.

The photographer hadn't even heard about the Titanic sinking yet, he just noticed that it appeared to show signs of collision, including a streak of red paint, according to Wired.

Part of Titanic Studios incorporates Paint Hall, where construction on the Titanic took place. It was first used in 2007 for the filming of "City of Ember," and it has been part of multiple TV shows and movies since then, including "Game of Thrones," according to Variety.

The Titanic had four smokestacks (or funnels), but only three actually carried smoke from the furnaces. You can see how no smoke is coming out of the fourth one.

Days after the ship went down, newspapers began compiling lists of people who had bought tickets but never boarded the Titanic — they called them the "Just Missed It Club."

Those who narrowly escaped disaster included Milton Hershey, who decided to take an earlier ship home with his wife; J. Pierpont Morgan (founder of General Electric and US Steel), who ended up staying at a French spa; and Guglielmo Marconi (an inventor), who also caught an earlier ship.

In addition to all that alcohol and tobacco, there were 75,000 pounds of fresh meat, 7,500 pounds of bacon, 36,000 oranges, 1,000 loaves of bread, and 40,000 fresh eggs on board, according to Titanic Facts.

The Nazi re-telling of the sinking of the Titanic attempted to blame the British for the sinking of the Titanic by pushing the ship to continue at full speed, despite the warnings of a (fictional) German First Officer who ostensibly was the only person aboard who cared about human life.

The behind-the-scenes scandal of this movie is almost unbelievable, according to the New York Post. Before being murdered in prison for speaking against the Nazi regime, the director demanded a full-size ocean liner that he could film on, and the Nazis provided the SS Cap Arcona (their version of a luxury ocean liner).

Tragically, the Cap Arcona ended up being used as a floating concentration camp and sank, resulting in somewhere between 4,500 and 7,000 casualties, according to The Washington Post.

Smith, who had been a captain for 40 years, was preparing to retire after his final journey on the Titanic. Unfortunately, he'd never get to retire, as he died aboard the ship. As History notes, no one knows for sure what happened to Smith, but there are many rumors regarding his death.

"Captain Smith had at least five different deaths, from heroic to ignominious," wrote Wyn Craig Wade in "The Titanic: End of a Dream." Some said he jumped off the ship with a baby, dove off himself, was washed away by a wave, or even shot himself (though historians widely discredit this theory).

Stranger still, some people claimed that he survived and that they'd seen him, but these sightings have been discounted.

A documentary about the six missing Chinese survivors (Lee Bing, Fang Lang, Chang Chip, Ah Lam, Chung Foo, and Ling Hee) called "The Six" premiered at film festivals in 2021.

"Six of the survivors, all Chinese sailors, had to stay on the ship, prohibited from entering the United States under an anti-immigration law called the Chinese Exclusion Act. The next day, immigration officials escorted them across Manhattan and put them on board a Cuba-bound cargo ship they had been contracted to work on. And then they seemingly vanished," The New York Times reported in August 2021.

One of these men, Lang, even inspired a scene in James Cameron's "Titanic" — he was rescued from the water by the single returning lifeboat, much like Kate Winslet's Rose. His rescue was also depicted, but the scene, which is available to watch on YouTube, was later deleted.

The BBC reported that the six survivors eventually returned to the UK. Chip died soon after the sinking in 1914. Lam was deported to Hong Kong, Hee made his way to India, Bing moved to Canada, and Lang eventually became a US citizen decades after he was rejected. It's unclear what happened to Foo.