Last Survivor of the Titanic Dies at 97

[VirusCoreHacker]

Turner Radio Network: Last Survivor of Titanic dead at 97

The last survivor of the RMS Titanic, which sank after hitting an iceberg on April 14, 1912, has died.

Elizabeth Gladys "Millvina" Dean passed away, "an old lady, warm in her bed," at age 97. She was only 9 weeks old when her family took her aboard the Titanic to start a new life in America.

At the time of its construction, the Titanic was the largest moving man-made object ever built. She struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York, NY.

The ship had 2223 souls on board, but only enough life boats for half that number.

Titanic had no sonar or radar as those technologies had not yet been invented. Lookouts were placed in what are called "crows nests" on towers high above the ship, with binoculars to watch for icebergs, which are notorious in the North Atlantic.

On the night Titanic sank, the ocean waters were so calm that the lookouts could not see any waves slamming up against the floating ice. By the time they saw the iceberg directly in front of the ship, it was too late to avoid collision. The rudder on the ship was too small to allow the vessel to turn sharply enough to avoid the crash.

The ship struck the iceberg on the right side of the vessel. The iceberg poked a series of holes in the ship along the right side. More than five compartments below sea level began flooding, causing the ship to go down by the head.

As the bow of the ship submerged, water flowed over the anti-flooding walls, spilling into compartments further to the rear of the vessel. This caused the bow to go down sharply, thereby raising the tail of of the massive ship up out of the water, standing almost vertically in the air.

The steel hull was not designed to take that kind of stress. It cracked amidships, causing the vessel to split in half.

The Time line of events was as follows:

Saw iceberg at 2340 HRS

Collision 1 minute later.

0040 HRS first lifeboat loaded

0210 HRS the stern rose out of the water exposing the propellers,

0220, HRS the last of the ship sank below the surface.

Since there were only enough lifeboats for half the souls on board, it was ordered that women and children be evacuated first. Of the 2223 souls on board, 1517 died. Millvina Dean was the last living survivor. Today, she too is gone.

After this disaster, laws were changed to require ships to have enough lifeboats to carry all passengers and crew.

Disaster attributed to ship's smallest parts: Rivets

New research suggests the catastrophic sinking of one of the largest ships ever built was caused by a hidden flaw in its smallest piece as scientists further investigate the century-old mystery of the Titanic.

Scientists specializing in metallurgy say they've concluded the Titanic's fatal flaw was in its rivets.

"I think we can honestly say that this is probably the most comprehensive study that's ever been done that addresses the sinking theory," said Jennifer Hooper McCarty, a forensic metallurgist. "We're the only people that have ever looked at Titanic rivets."

Any school kid can tell you it was an iceberg that sank the Titanic, but what's baffled historians for nearly a century is why it sank so fast.

McCarty joined Tim Foecke of the National Institute of Standards and Technology for the project to determine what happened when the ship went down in April 1912. Foecke's work in forensic metallurgy includes an investigation of how the World Trade Center collapsed, in a project that looked at the breakdown of metal beams under intense heat.

He put those tools to work on the Titanic after a 10-year investigation of historical documents and wreckage from the ocean floor kept turning up one key problem: The Titanic's rivets, which were used to keep the ship's hull together, seemed to have simply "popped" without even stretching first.

"When they're missing a head, you know they are not acting the way they're supposed to," McCarty said.

While most of the ship's 3 million rivets were made of steel, those used in the bow, the point of impact, were made of wrought iron. Here's where their investigation turns from historical to cutting edge -- call it CSI: Titanic. Under a powerful microscope, they discovered those iron rivets that were recovered from the wreckage shared a big problem -- they were riddled with weak points from substandard material.

"We had 48 actual Titanic rivets that I first examined under a microscope, and I took very small pictures of the inside and I looked at the structure," McCarty said. "From a scientific standpoint, they were flawed, because of the way they were made."
Re-Creating the Historic Sinking

To prove their theory, they made replicas of the Titanic's rivets built with the very same materials -- even forged by blacksmiths in the same part of England.

The rivets were put to the test by simulating the amount of pressure the Titanic's hull would have been under after the collision. "These rivets should have been able to hold between 16,000 and 20,000 pounds of load," Foecke said. "What we found when we ran the tests of our simulated material is that it only held 9,000 pounds."

As the rivets snapped one at a time, the scientists believe, the Titanic's hull opened up like a zipper, flooding what was supposed to be an unsinkable ship far quicker than would be expected.

If not for this fatal flaw, the scientists suggest the Titanic would have stayed afloat much longer and possibly long enough for much of the crew to be rescued. McCarty and Foecke are publishing their research in a book and believe their conclusions have historical importance.

"We think this is the best forensic analysis that can be done short of completely excavating the ship, which is obviously not going to happen, but all of the evidence we've been able to pull together … plus what we've been able to get out of the three expeditions that we've been involved with, seems to point to this as a reason why she sank as quickly as she did," Foecke said.

=(

 

[Allister Rose]

yeah i just saw that a while ago.

does everyone gets this sad when someone dies? people please get a grip. the women was old and she was in the titanic when she was a kid. she wasnt THAT famous

 

[Shadow Soldier]

I thought she died in the movie in her bed after throwing her jewel into the ocean....

 

[Pinwheel]

So basicly about 3 paragraphs about the last survivor dying, and like 10 about shit we already knew. Whee.

 

[Azrael]

Oh well, there she dies

 

[shadowmind]

Well at least she lived a long life, hopefully it was a good one =)

 

[Chakolat Strawberry]

She dies, oh well.

9 weeks old, she can't even remember anything at all when the Titanic sank :/

 

[Allister Rose]

I thought she died in the movie in her bed after throwing her jewel into the ocean....

that was Rose

 

[Azrael]

that was Rose

Was that even a true story?

 

[Allister Rose]

Was that even a true story?

idk, but i doubt it

 

[D]

I thought she died in the movie in her bed after throwing her jewel into the ocean....

Bitch could've at least sold it somewhere.

Nah, just throw it in the fuckin ocean.

 

[-+zackdabomb+-]

Wow the last one huh..she was to young to member that anyway

 

[Allister Rose]

Bitch could've at least sold it somewhere.

Nah, just throw it in the fuckin ocean.

again that wasnt the last survivor....but yeah...she sould have at least sold it

 

[Stavvy]

God she's so FUCKING GOD DAMNED STUPID.

Whore, hope she died a horrible death involving the raping and deaths of the rest of her family.

It's stupid people like that who annoy the piss out of me.



But really, she was nine weeks old, big deal. She wouldn't know if someone hadn't told her.

 

[Orion]

I honestly fail to see the big deal.
She was too young to have any possible traumatic experience or experience any direct loss from it.

 

[Antiquity]

She lived a long life and it was her time.
Least she didn't have to witness a whole lot.

 

[Dogenzaka]

This kind of sadness will be reserved later for when we see the last World War II/Holocaust survivor die.

 

[Orion]

She lived a long life and it was her time.
Least she didn't have to witness a whole lot.

She didn't witness anything.

 

[Dawning Twilight]

yeah i just saw that a while ago.

does everyone gets this sad when someone dies?

You're an idiot.

people please get a grip.

You're an idiot.

the women was old and she was in the titanic when she was a kid. she wasnt THAT famous

Should we say the same about survivors of 9/11 and other catastrophic events like that as well then? Think before you say something next time.

 

[shadowmind]

Okay just to clear this up for everyone, the story of rose from the titanic was fiction, there was no "jack i'm flying",no car sex( well maybe there was but by real people) and no gem throw into the ocean, and the story wasn't based off this lady that just died, so yea...