The Titanic sank in 1912, killing over 1,500 people, including wealthy passengers like Benjamin Guggenheim and John Jacob Astor IV. Many people claimed to have narrowly avoided being on the ship, including JP Morgan and Milton Hershey. Only 705 people survived the disaster, and some, like Guglielmo Marconi and Theodore Dreiser, had chosen to travel on different ships. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt I changed his plans and avoided the Titanic, but died three years later on the RMS Lusitania.
More than 1,500 people died when the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in the icy waters of the North Atlantic in April 1912. Passengers on the liner included some of the world’s richest and most famous, such as Benjamin Guggenheim, who made a fortune in silver mining and John Jacob Astor IV, believed to be one of the richest men in the world at the time. After the tragedy, thousands of people came forward to say that they had miraculously lost their boat for various and fortuitous reasons. The verified list of close calls included 74-year-old legendary financier JP Morgan and chocolate baron Milton Hershey.
It’s not their day to sink:
Only 705 of the 2,224 people aboard the luxury liner survived. Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, whose wireless telegraphy helped save lives during the disaster, was offered free passage on the Titanic but took an earlier ship instead.
American novelist Theodore Dreiser, whose best-known works include Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy, considered booking travel for the maiden voyage of the “unsinkable” ship, but decided on a less expensive vessel instead.
Another man of means, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt I, changed his plans “because so many things can go wrong on a maiden voyage.” Three years later, he died aboard RMS Lusitania when she was hit by German torpedoes off the coast of Ireland.
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