April 14, 1912

On this day in 1912, the RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic, just before midnight. The ship, one of the biggest luxury ocean liners ever built, had departed from England on its maiden voyage just four days earlier. Designed by Irish shipbuilder William Pirrie, the “unsinkable” Titanic measured 883 feet and was divided into 16 compartments. The ship’s last stop had been Queenstown (now called Cobh), Ireland, and it was en route to New York at the time of the crash. The Irish community aboard the vessel, the majority of whom could only afford steerage, suffered the highest death toll. 705 passengers survived the calamity, while 1,517 souls were lost.