16 Random Facts About The Titanic That Will Send You Spiraling Down A Rabbit Hole

Can't. Stop. Reading.

1. A first-class ticket cost $2,560, which is more than $61,000 today.

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For the price of that ticket, passenger Charlotte Drake Cardeza got a three-room suite with two bedrooms and a sitting room, plus two wardrobe rooms and a bath. She also had a private, 50-foot-long promenade deck.

2. There is an actual letter that was not only written the day the Titanic sank, but that survived the tragedy.

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The letter, which was written by survivor Esther Hart and is printed on Titanic letterhead, talks about how Hart and her daughter were both set to sing in a concert on board the ship "tomorrow night."

3. The violin that was being played as the Titanic sank was auctioned off in 2013 for $1.7 million.

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The auction house Henry Aldridge and Sons spent seven years proving the violin was genuine and belonged to Wallace Hartley, who was the band leader of the Titanic.

4. On April 11, 1912, three days before the ship sank, second-class passengers ate boiled hominy, grilled ox, kidneys and bacon, fried potatoes, buckwheat cakes, and more.

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5. And on April 12, 1912, first-class passengers ate halibut with a shrimp sauce, fillets of duckling with green peas, caramel pudding, and more.

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6. The Titanic was equipped to carry approximately 64 lifeboats, but it only carried around 20.

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7. This is what one of the ship's life preservers looked like.

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It is actually the life preserver of Laura Mabel Francatelli, a survivor of the Titanic disaster, and was signed by other survivors who shared her lifeboat.

8. Plunging into water as cold as the sea that Titanic passengers jumped into has been described as "being stabbed everywhere, simultaneously, with a thousand knives."

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9. Milton Hershey of Hershey's chocolate fame was supposed to sail on the Titanic, but, because of business plans, he ended up getting on another ship that left earlier.

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Other notable people who almost boarded the ship include financier J.P. Morgan, 34-year-old multimillionaire Alfred Vanderbilt, who died three years later in the sinking of the Lusitania, and Pittsburgh steel baron Henry Clay Frick, who canceled his passage when his wife sprained her ankle.

10. The last survivor of the Titanic, Millvina Dean, died at age 97 in 2009.

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Dean was the youngest of the ship's survivors and was only 9 weeks old when the ship sank.

11. There was a gymnasium with "cycle racing machines" aboard the ship.

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12. And there was also a swimming pool, which was located on the middle deck.

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13. Violet Jessop, a stewardess aboard the ship, is the only woman to survive both the sinking of the Titanic and her sister ship, the Britannic.

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14. The documentary Titanic: The New Evidence speculates that a fire might have contributed to the Titanic's sinking.

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The documentary claims that the 30-foot-long black streak in the photo above is "evidence that a fire below decks in a coal bunker caused serious damage that weakened the ship's hull in the same area where the iceberg later struck the ship."

15. The wealthiest passenger onboard was John Jacob Astor IV, heir to the Astor family fortune.

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Although he did not survive, his pregnant wife, Madeleine Talmage Force, did.

16. And finally, the wreckage of the Titanic wasn't discovered under sea until 1985.

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