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On April 10, 1912, the Titanic, largest ship afloat, left Southampton, England on her maiden voyage to New York City. The White Star Line had spared no expense in assuring her luxury. A legend even before she sailed, her passengers were a mixture of the world's wealthiest basking in the elegance of first class accommodations and immigrants packed into steerage.
Four days into her journey, at 11:40 P.M. on the night of April 14, she struck an iceberg. Her fireman compared the sound of the impact to "the tearing of calico, nothing more."
However, the collision was fatal and the icy water soon poured through the ship.
It became obvious that many would not find safety in a lifeboat. Each passenger was issued a life jacket but life expectancy would be short when exposed to water four degrees below freezing. As the forward portion of the ship sank deeper, passengers scrambled to the stern.
John Thayer witnessed the sinking from a lifeboat. "We could see groups of the almost fifteen hundred people still aboard, clinging in clusters or bunches, like swarming bees; only to fall in masses, pairs or singly, as the great after part of the ship, two hundred and fifty feet of it, rose into the sky, till it reached a sixty-five or seventy degree angle." The great ship slowly slid beneath the waters two hours and forty minutes after the collision
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The Panama Canal opened on August 15, 1914. Although opening-day festivities were overshadowed by the beginning of war in Europe earlier that month, an international exposition in San Francisco the next year celebrated the canal’s completion.
Today, after more than eight decades of efficient operation, the Panama Canal remains a symbol of human creativity, persistence, and achievement.
Canal locks are like water-filled stairs that move ships across sloping terrain. After a ship enters a lock, the gates are closed, isolating the chamber and its contents from the water around it.
The chamber is either filled or emptied, thus raising or lowering the water level as necessary. Transit across Panama’s mountains was made possible by damming part of the Chagres River to create Gatun Lake and then building six 1,000-foot-long (305-m), 80-foot-deep (24-m) concrete lock chambers to reach it. The lake fed water to the locks by means of gravity; electricity powered the gates. |
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On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg were shot to death in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia, a group aiming at the unification of the South Slavs. The event sparked off the outbreak of World War I.
Bosnia and Herzegovina were provinces just south of Austria. The Turks had
governed them until 1878, but lost them in their disastrous war with
Russia.
So the Treaty of Berlin granted Austria the power to
administer these two provinces. As a result of this annexation
Bosnia’s three main groups, Croats, ethnic Serbs and Muslims now
populated the Austro/Hungarian Empire, giving even more variety to
the mix of nationalities.
But the Serbs weren’t quite happy with
this. They shared a desire with their Serb brothers across the river
in Serbia. They wanted their province to be joined with Serbia. Photos
1920s >
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