Author: NewMexiKen

Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg;
866 Rescued By Carpathia, Probably 1,250 Perish;
Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Noted Names Missing

Biggest Liner Plunges to the Bottom at 2:20 A.M.
RESCUERS THERE TOO LATE
Expect to Pick Up the Few Hundreds Who Took to the Lifeboats.
WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST
Cunarder Carpathia Rushing to New York with the Survivors.
SEA SEARCH FOR OTHERS
The California Stands By on Chance of Picking Up Other Boats or Rafts.
OLYMPIC SENDS THE NEWS
Only Ship to Flash Wireless Messages to Shore After the Disaster.

From The New York Times story of the sinking.

An historic timepiece which stopped ticking when the Titanic sank 93 years ago today is to be auctioned.

The 18-carat Gold Pocket Watch is among the rare artefacts connected to the ill-fated ocean liner to be sold by Bonhams and Butterfields in Massachusetts in the US on May 1.

The watch, which was damaged when disaster struck mid-Atlantic, belonged to Nora Keane, an Irish immigrant, living in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania with her brothers and sisters.

Following a four-month visit to her mother in Castle Connell, County Limerick, Miss Keane decided to return on the maiden voyage of RMS Titanic, boarding at Queenstown as a 2nd Class passenger.

She was rescued by lifeboat with the watch which got water damage when the lifeboat passed under the ship’s pump discharge.

Its gilt face has some rust staining, but it is still expected to fetch £2,600-3,600, Bonhams said.

Scotsman.com News

RMS Titanic hit an iceberg at 11:40 PM (Titanic time) on this date in 1912. She was at 41° 46′ north latitude , 50° 14′ west longitude in the Atlantic.

She sunk at 2:20 AM on the 15th. So, more here tomorrow.

In the meanwhile, here for you history and film buffs is Titanic in 30 seconds with bunnies.

opened his first retail store, called the Golden Rule Store, in the mining town of Kemmerer, Wyoming, on this date in 1902. In 1913, the chain incorporated as J.C. Penney Company, Inc.

The first store, as seen in 1904.

It was on this date 70 years ago that the largest of the dust storms of the 1930s swept the western plains.

Cyclic winds rolled up two miles high, stretched out a hundred miles and moved faster than 50 miles an hour. These storms destroyed vast areas of the Great Plains farmland. The methods of fighting the dust were as many and varied as were the means of finding a way to get something to eat and wear. Every possible crack was plugged, sheets were placed over windows and blankets were hung behind doors. Often the places were so tightly plugged against the dust (which still managed to get in) that the houses became extremely hot and stuffy.

Quotation and photo from the Cimmaron Heritage Center, Boise City, Oklahoma. Boise City is in the Oklahoma panhandle near Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas and Texas.

As Atzerodt and Paine fanned out to seek their targets, Booth, a celebrated actor, familiar to everybody who worked at Ford’s Theatre, had no trouble in slipping upstairs during the performance of Our American Cousin. Moving quietly down the aisle behind the dress circle, he stood for a few moments near the President’s box. A member of the audience, seeing him there, thought him “the handsomest man I had ever seen.” John Parker, the Metropolitan policeman assigned to protect the President, had left his post in the passageway, and the box was guarded only by Charles Forbes, a White House footman. When Booth showed Forbes his calling card, he was admitted to the presidential box. Barring the door behind him, so as not to be disturbed, he noiselessly moved behind Lincoln, who was leaning forward, with his chin in his right hand and his arm on the balustrade. At a distance of about two feet, the actor pointed his derringer at the back of the President’s head on the left side and pulled the trigger. It was about 10:13 P.M.

When Major Rathbone tried to seize the intruder, Booth lunged at him with his razor-sharp hunting knife, which had a 7¼-inch blade. “The Knife,” Clara Harris reported, “went from the elbow nearly to the shoulder, inside, — cutting an artery, nerves and veins — he bled so profusely as to make him very weak.” Shoving his victim aside, Booth placed his hands on the balustrade and vaulted toward the stage. It was an easy leap for the gymnastic actor, but the spur on his heel caught in the flags decorating the box and he fell heavily on one foot, breaking the bone just above the ankle. Waving his dagger, he shouted in a loud, melodramatic voice: “Sic semper tyrannis” (“Thus always to tyrants” — the motto of the state of Virginia). Some in the audience thought he added, “The South is avenged.” Quickly he limped across the stage, with what one witness called “a motion…like the hopping of a bull frog,” and made his escape through the rear of the theater.

Up to this point the audience was not sure what had happened. Perhaps most thought the whole disturbance was part of the play. But as the blue-white smoke from the pistol drifted out of the presidential box, Mary Lincoln gave a heart-rending shriek and screamed, “They have shot the President! They have shot the President!”

From David Herbert Donald’s outstanding biography of Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on this date in 1865. Lincoln died the next morning.

On April 26, Booth and co-conspirator David Herold were surrounded while hiding in a tobacco shed in Port Royal, Virginia. Herold surrendered to Union troops, but Booth held out and was shot while the shed burned down around him.

Click on the image to see a larger version of the poster.

Read The New York Times story from the day after the assassination, headlined Awful Event.