Bits & Pieces, Tips & Trivia

 Who has not seen this fantastic image of the Titanic's bow as she rests nearly a mile deep in the Atlantic:

Bet you did not know:

• She was the largest moving man-made object until 1912.
• Some 4000 workers took 2 years to build her in Belfast, Ireland
• She cost $10,000,000 in 1912 dollars (about $322,000,000 today)
• The 4-day, one way, first-class passage cost about $80,000 in 1998 dollars
• Lifeboat requirements were based on tonnage, not passenger count
• New York Evening Sun ran a headline: ALL SAVED FROM TITANIC
• The 1997 movie, Titanic, cost 24 times what the ship itself cost to build in 1911 (you do the math!)
• One body, still floating in its life vest, was found 2 months la
• More than 3000 books have been written about the Titanic
• The last funnel on Titanic was  "dummy" for ventilation and aesthetics and no smoke came out of it
• The Titanic Historical Society, founded in 1963, has 5000 members; PO Box 5153, Indian Orchard MA  01151

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August, 2023: Miami, Florida:  Archaeologists have found a submerged gravestone in Dry Tortugas National Park near the Florida Keys and they say the discovery could also mean there's a cemetery and hospital in the area. The site could have been used for quarantined yellow fever patients on a small island that has since eroded into the sea.

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Jeanne Coe, a longtime member of EWGS, does indexing under the SCRIBE project for the Washington State archives. She notes odd and unusual names.......... like these:

• America Jane Chamberlain, b. Oregon
• Ralph Oregon Dunbar, b. Illinois
• Mary Nevada Kiner, b. 1877 in Iowa
• Nevada Melvina Cameron, b. 1901 in Washington
• Hazel Inez Price, b. 1892 in King County, WA; her father was Lake Erie Price, b. Minnesota and her mother was Capitola Albatross Fuller, b. Kansas.
• Denver Colorado Sayler, b. 1906 in Kansas

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From Kenneth Roberts' book, "Trending Into Maine," published in 1938, I learned that the Salish word for white person was soo-yap-ee, which meant "upside down face." This happened because most 19th century Euro-American men wore beards.