Titanic: 40 fascinating facts

On this day in 1985, the Titanic was found in the North Atlantic Ocean. Here are 40 facts about the ship and its demise   

1. The RMS Titanic was the world’s largest passenger ship when it entered service, measuring 269 metres (882 feet) in length, and the largest man-made moving object on Earth. The largest passenger vessel is now the MS Allure of the Seas, at 362 metres.

2. The ship burned around 600 tonnes of coal a day – hand shovelled into its furnaces by a team of 176 men. Almost 100 tonnes of ash were ejected into the sea each day.

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3. The ship's interiors were loosely inspired by those at the Ritz hotel in London. Facilities on board included a gym, pool, Turkish bath, a kennel for first class dogs, and a squash court. It even had its own on board newspaper – the Atlantic Daily Bulletin.

4. There were 20,000 bottles of beer on board, 1,500 bottles of wine and 8,000 cigars – all for the use of first-class passengers.

5. The Grand Staircase on board descended down seven of the ship’s 10 decks and featured oak panelling, bronze cherubs and paintings. Replicas can be found at the Titanic Museum in Branson, Missouri.
6. The staircase at the White Swan Hotel in Alnwick, contains banisters from the Grand Staircase of the Titanic’s sister ship, the Olympic. The staircases are presumed to have been identical.
7. Only 16 wooden lifeboats and four collapsible boats were carried, enough to accommodate 1,178 people, only one-third of Titanic's total capacity, but more than legally required.
8. There were 246 injuries and two deaths recorded during the ship’s 26-month construction in Belfast.
9. Twenty horses were required to carry the main anchor.
10. 100,000 people turned up to see the ship’s launch on May 31, 1911.
11. 22 tons of soap and tallow (rendered beef or mutton fat) were smeared on the slipway to assist its unhindered passage into the River Lagan.
12. The ship made two stops after leaving Southampton – at Cherbourg in northern France, and Cobh (then Queenstown) in Ireland.
13. Of the 885 crew on board, just 23 were female. 699 boarded in Southampton, and four in 10 were natives of the town.

14. The last supper served to first-class passengers consisted of 11 courses.
15. First-class passengers were given a music book containing 352 songs. Musicians on board were required to know them all, in case requests were made.
16. John Jacob Astor IV was the richest passenger on board, with a net worth of around $85m (approximately $2bn today), and went down with the ship. One legend claims that after the ship hit the iceberg he quipped to a waiter: “I asked for ice, but this is ridiculous”.
17. Another notable victim was Benjamin Guggenheim, an American businessman. Realising that the ship was going down, he and his valet, Victor Giglio, reputedly changed into their evening wear while he remarked: “We've dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen." They were last spotted on deck chairs drinking brandy and smoking cigars.
18. Noel Leslie, the Countess of Rothes, was also on board, but survived. She is mentioned in an episode of Downton Abbey. "Isn't this terrible? When you think how excited Lucy Rothes was at the prospect,” remarks the Countess of Grantham when she hears of the disaster.

19. Two of the nine dogs on board were rescued – a Pomeranian and a Pekinese.
20. Numerous people held tickets for the journey, but did not actually sail, including Milton S. Hershey, founder of the chocolate firm, Guglielmo Marconi, and Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, who died on the RMS Lusitania three years later.
21. The last remaining survivor of the disaster, Millvina Dean, died on May 31, 2009, aged 97. She was two months old at the time.
22. The iceberg was spotted at 11.40pm on April 14, 1912, by lookout Frederick Fleet, who proclaimed: “Iceberg! Right ahead!” Fleet survived the disaster and was a lookout on the RMS Oceanic during the Twenties, before serving in the Second World War. Pranksters placed a pair of binoculars on his grave in 2012 with a note “sorry they’re 100 years too late”.
23. The iceberg was around 100 feet tall and came from a glacier in Greenland.
24. Just 37 seconds elapsed between the sighting of the iceberg and the collision.
25. First Officer William McMaster Murdoch ordered the ship to turn, but it was too large to do so in time. It has been suggested that the ship would not have sunk if it hit the iceberg head-on. Murdoch went down with the ship; a memorial to him is found in his hometown of Dalbeattie, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland.
26. Edward Smith, the ship’s captain, also went down with the vessel. His last words were “"Well boys, you've done your duty and done it well. I ask no more of you. I release you. You know the rule of the sea. It's every man for himself now, and God bless you." A statue of him can be seen in Lichfield, Staffordshire.
27. The ship received six warnings about icebergs during the voyage.
28. A lifeboat drill, scheduled for April 14, was cancelled for unknown reasons.

29. The ship broke in two at around 2.20am on April 15, and sunk, sending all remaining passengers into the ocean. The temperature would have been -2 °C – few would have survived longer than 15 minutes in the water, while around one in five would have died within two minutes from cold shock.
30. Charles Joughin, however, the ship’s baker, reportedly tread water for two hours before being rescued with little ill-effects. He claimed he had not felt the cold due to the amount of whiskey he had drunk.
31. 26 of those on board were honeymooning couples.
32. Musicians played for two hours and five minutes as the ship sank.
33. The SS Californian was criticised for ignoring the Titanic’s distress signals. She was later sunk herself, by a German submarine.
34. The RMS Carpathia arrived at 4am and transported the survivors to New York. 40,000 greeted its arrival at Pier 54.

35. Only 306 bodies were found. The dead were taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Its Maritime Museum has a dedicated section that includes a deckchair recovered from the wreck, mortuary bags, and the shoes of an unknown victim. See maritime.museum.gov.ns.ca.
36. The wreck of the Titanic was discovered in 1985 and lies 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, around 12,500 feet below the surface. The marine dive specialists Deep Ocean Expeditions previously offered trips to the wreck using a Mir submersible chartered from the Russian Academy of Sciences - with berths costing $59,000 - but stopped offering them in 2012.
37. The bow penetrated 18 metres into the sea bed.
38. Dozens of films and documentaries have been made about the disaster, the most controversial of which was commissioned by Joseph Goebbels in 1943. Its plot discredited British and American businessmen and features brave German passengers. The epilogue states: "the deaths of 1,500 people remain un-atoned, forever a testament of Britain's endless quest for profit."

39. James Cameron’s 1997 effort is undoubtedly the most successful – it has grossed more than $2bn and won 11 Oscars.
40. The film’s main theme song – My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion – was the biggest selling single of 1998 and has been covered by Neil Diamond, Sarah Brightman, Kenny G (instrumental), and Miss Piggy from the Muppets.


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The Truth Behind What Happened In The Ramayana

'Ramayana’ is one of the two greatest epics in the Hindu Mythology, the other being the ‘Mahabharata’. It forms an important part of Hindu literature which is considered to be Historical. There are many things about the Ramayana that are absolutely mythological. A demon king with ten heads, talking monkeys, demon that could morph into a deer, a flying chariot, a demi-god who could take the form of a vulture. This epic was not written as one definite piece of text. Valmiki collected data from different sources and combined them with his own knowledge of events, which was largely passed down orally through the years. And then, other writers too contributed to it by adding details.
Ramayana is told differently in different places.  It is the mega-story that contains a multitude of narratives of India. The narrative in Bali, Malaysia is quite likely at variance from what we generally have come to believe. We Hindus know it and accept it. Following is the outline of ‘Ramayana’ from the Jain narratives:
Vimalasuri’s version is one of the most important and influential Jain stories of Rama. Vimalsuri claims that the Ramayana of Valmiki is filled with illogical and false stories. In his version, Kaikeyi is shown to be a generous and affectionate mother who wanted to stop Bharata from becoming a monk. For this, she wanted to give him the responsibility of a king. When Rama knew about it, he willingly went into exile. In Vimalsuri’s Paumchariya, Rama married thrice when he was in exile (which was not mentioned in Hindu epic). Lakshmana, his brother married eleven times.

In Jain Ramayana, Vanaras are not literally monkeys; they are demigods called Vidyadharas, who inhabit the city of Kishkindhi and who are called vanaras because their standard and shields and crowns bear the image of a monkey, an animal that is commonly found in those parts. In the Jain Ramayana, Ravan is presented as a great and noble king, and as someone who is learned and who is a devotee of Jainism.” In fact, he isn’t even a rakshasa as popularly understood; like Hanuman and the other vanaras, he, too, is a Vidyadhar, only he belongs to the rakshasa lineage. The Jain Ramayanas are in fact very sympathetic to Ravan, even presenting him as a doomed and tragic figure that has one fatal flaw: lust.

The ancient Jain authors told Ram’s story very differently. One thing that set them apart from the Hindus was their insistence on eschewing the more “miraculous” elements of the story, such as the name Vanaras as explained in the Paumachariyam. Another example is that no divine payasam was involved in the birth of Ram and his brothers; they were born in the normal way, according to the Jain texts. (According to Hindu Ramayana, Rama, and his brothers were born as the result of Putra-Kameshti Yaga by Dasharatha, which was distributed among his wives. Sumitra was fed twice, so she gave birth to twins). Rama had around eight thousand wives among whom Sita was the principle consort (in the Hindu epic, Rama has only one wife Sita), whereas Lakshmana had around sixteen thousand wives in which Prithvisundari was his principle consort.
Also in Jain Ramayana, Lakshmana kills Ravana in the end (deviating from the Ramayana where the hero Rama slays Ravana). According to traditional Jain history, there were different kinds of Salakapurusas (illustrious persons or worthies), including the Jinas or Tirthankaras, who propagated the Jain faith and Chakravartins or heroic emperors. Baladevas, Vasudevas, and Prativasudevas were other such salakapurusas, with Ram (referred to as Padma), Lakshman and Ravan being Baladeva, Vasudeva, and Prativasudeva, respectively. These heroes are born in every age, with Vasudeva and Prativasudeva destined to fight each other. Thus it is, that in Jain version, it is not Ram who kills Ravan — it is Lakshman who does so.

This detail is important because it is meant to present Ram as the ideal Jain hero, who has forsaken violence and who, at the end of his life, becomes a Jain mendicant and attains enlightenment. He is the evolved soul who has conquered his passions in what is his last birth. Lakshman and Ravan, on the other hand, go to hell. They don’t attain liberation until they have undergone many more births and deaths. These modifications to Valmiki’s story were necessary to illustrate the Jain principle of karma: if you live a pious life like Ram, you will be rewarded with a better existence in your next life and will slowly move towards attaining enlightenment and if you commit sins, you will go to hell and will remain caught in the kalachakra — the cycle of life and death.


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Top 10 Victories for Animals in 2015

This year you had the highest impact for animals EVER!

1. When Ringling announced it was ending the use of elephants in its circus acts.




2. When 45 airlines agreed they would not ship animal trophies following the killing of Cecil the lion
.



3. That time you made it possible for us to save more than 200 animals from cruelty in North Carolina.




4. When USFWS announced it would list all chimpanzees as endangered and NIH announced it would retire all their chimps to sanctuary, closing the door on an era of invasive testing on chimpanzees, funded by taxpayer dollars.




5. When our Animal Rescue Team worked with our Emergency Placement Partners to help transport animals away from the floods in South Carolina caused by Hurricane Joaquin.




6. When China's President Xi Jinpeng and President Obama announced a shared commitment to end the global ivory trade.




7. And then Washington State and California passed measures that got us closer to stopping the trade of products from endangered and rare animals.




8. When the EU tightened the ban on imports of seal products, and the killing of seals in Canada for their fur was reduced by 90 percent.




9. When, with your support, we set up a program in Puerto Rico to address the animal crisis on the island.




10. And last but not least, when more than a dozen of the biggest names in food retail announced they'd be going cage-free including McDonald's and Taco Bell, with the quickest timeline yet.

Thank you for being a part of this incredible movement!
Learn more and be a #HeroforAnimals

‘In 1971, Muslims murdered 2.4 million Hindus and raped 200,000 Hindu women’

he article is deeply anti-Western with a common neglect we hear from Indian people to acknowledgement the fact that Britain saved India from its Muslim invaders attempts to turn their nation into an Islamic State. You never hear a single Indian admit this fact which is strange. Instead they are focused purely on anti-Western rhetorics. However, it covers a rather little mention incident where over 2.4 million Hindus were killed by Muslims. Muslim terrorism, attacks, tensions continue to this day. There is no Britain left in India they can blame for it.

nderstanding Islamic violence; how to defend our freedoms

Interview by People of Shambhala.

In the wake of renewed violence against Hindus in Pakistan, and with more than 100 Hindu families seeking asylum in India, Director of the Canadian Hindu Advocacy group spoke to People of Shambhala. Mr. Banerjee talks about the background to the conflict, and why Pakistan was created in 1947. Why the West should include Hinduism, not just the “Judeo-Christian” tradition. And he also discusses Islam and violence against Hindus and the West, and how we can defend our values and freedoms.

PoS: At the moment about 100 Hindu families are seeking asylum in India, from Pakistan, and are claiming discrimination and violence. There were four doctors murdered on the first day of Eid, and, I think, a Sikh was stabbed as well. Can you tell us a little about that situation?

RB: Sure. The situation is very natural. Most people don’t understand what Pakistan is. Pakistan is a country that was formed for the Muslims. India is a multi-ethnic country for everybody. So Pakistan was formed with the very idea that the only people that should be in Pakistan are Muslims. There is nothing strange about what’s going on in Pakistan today. It’s being going on for a long time.

At independence Pakistan’s population was about ten percent Hindu and Sikh. Now it’s less than one percent. So the question is where did that nine percent go? Well, they were either ethnically cleansed, driven away, or slaughtered in large numbers in the 1971 war between India and Pakistan. In East Pakistan an estimated 2.4 million Hindus were slaughtered in just one year, and hundreds of thousands of Hindu women were raped.

There is nothing surprising about any of this because Islam was introduced into the Asian subcontinent with the objective of occupying and exterminating the Hindus. According to the historian William Durant, and other historians, an estimated 80 million Hindus were killed, were slaughtered, and thousands and thousands of Hindu temples were smashed, and mosques were built on top of them. The Muslims of India tried very hard over the period of their 700 years [of occupation] to wipe out the Hindus. But there was resistance from some of the Hindu kingdoms. They never had full control over India so they were unable to achieve that goal. But that’s the eternal goal. According to Islam, Hinduism is the lowest form of life on the planet. Because Hindus, according to them, they’re polytheistic, they believe in multiple gods. They believe we worship idols, and idol worship is a sin in Islam.  

PoS: One thing that has struck me is just the extent of the attacks on Hindus, Buddhists, Yezidis, Zoroastrians, Kalash. Yet we don’t hear anything about this. You mentioned the war of 71; 2.4 million dead, 200,000 Hindu women raped, but we don’t hear anything about that in the West.

RB: No you don’t, because there’s a systematic effort by Muslims and petrodollars to cover it up. The reason you don’t hear about it is because they make tremendous effort to silence it.

PoS: In all fairness, some Middle Eastern newspapers that probably cater mostly to Muslims have covered some of it, but you don’t seem to find it in the West, which is even more incredible. Why do you think Western journalists won’t cover something like that? The West always portrays itself as caring about minorities and being the people that always stand up to stop genocide, and that are always campaigning against violence against minorities. But nothing.

RB: This may offend you a little bit.

PoS: It won’t [laughs].

RB: It probably will [laughs]. But, it’s because the West have been hypocrites.

PoS: Yeah.

RB: If you look at Britain, for example, when they went to India they did not stop genocide or massacres, they expedited them. They actually supported the Muslims against the Hindus, helped them to perpetrate massacres. In terms of the establishment of the state of Pakistan, if you read people like William Dalrymple, a British historian, it becomes quite clear that the British encouraged the creation of Pakistan in order to divide the [anti-colonial] independence movement.

PoS: Do you think there is still a kind of colonial residue in the atmosphere. Do you think there is some kind of patronizing attitude in the media? Is that why we don’t see atrocities reported?

I’ve heard this question before. That it’s a form of racism that they don’t condemn Muslims for their human rights violations is because they are non-Western and [therefore] they are expected to be barbaric. There might be some of that, but these days it’s rather more a culture of fear. I mean, if you publish a cartoon of Mohammed, even if you’re in the West, you get threatened, and you possibly get killed, and you have riots going on. So now it’s more of a culture of fear.

PoS: On that note, Subramanian Swamy, the Hindu professor at Harvard, was fired because he wrote an article on how to wipe out Islamic terror [in India]. I read it. I didn’t find it shocking… I suppose [at the most controversial point] he’s saying that non-Hindus would have to appreciate their Hindu roots or they wouldn’t be allowed to vote. What was your take on his article and on his being fired?

RB: The article was a hundred percent correct. He did not say – as has been claimed – that all non-Hindus should be forced to convert to Hinduism or anything like that. He didn’t even say that non-Hindus should be oppressed or treated badly within India. He just said they should have a respect for Hinduism, and that they should acknowledge the proper history, especially the history of the Muslims in India. There was no such thing as Islam in India before about 1,000 AD. Muslims invaded and forcibly converted millions of Hindus to Islam. That’s just a historical fact. And that they should acknowledge that historical fact.

PoS: Why is it when it comes to Islam, we don’t stick for minorities? We don’t stick up for women’s rights? We don’t stick up for gay rights? All the things that we would stand up for at any other time.

RB: It’s a combination of different things. Political correctness is part of it, but it’s not the whole explanation. It’s more a simple combination of fear and bribery. In many cases it’s just the money and influence pouring in from the Middle East demanding that no negative aspects of Islam be spoken about. It’s the carrot and the stick, the carrot being the money being the money flowing in from petrodollars, and the stick being [the fear of] rioting and beheading over a cartoon or any slight to Islam.

PoS: In 2008, there was the Mumbai attacks. A couple of things about that were striking. One thing was the way the Western media covered it. If memory serves me correctly – and I think it does – it was implied that the attacks in Mumbai were against essentially Western targets, such as the Taj Mahal Hotel. Do you think they were going after Western targets or do you think there was another incentive?

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