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The Biggest Screwups That Changed History

Khalid Elhassan April 29, 2023 31 min

Mistake - Columbus landed in the Caribbean, and thought he was close to Asia — Columbus landed in the Caribbean, and thought he was close to Asia. History Network

The Lost Key That Led to History’s Most Infamous Maritime Disaster

Mistake - The key to the locker that contained the Titanic's binoculars — The key to the locker that contained the Titanic’s binoculars. The Telegraph

At around 11:40PM on the night of April 14^th, 1912, four days into the Titanic’s voyage, lookout Frederick Fleet spotted an iceberg in the ship’s path, and alerted the bridge. The officer in charge ordered the engines stopped and the ship steered around the obstacle. Unfortunately, given the distance to the iceberg when the alarm was sounded, the Titanic’s speed at the time, and the ship’s mass, disaster was inevitable. Basic physics made it impossible for the mammoth ship to maneuver away in time to avoid a collision.

The Titanic had often been heralded as “unsinkable”. When it struck the iceberg, however, it sank. It was one of history’s worst maritime disasters. Of the 2224 passengers and crew aboard the ship, over 1500 lost their lives in one of modern history’s worst peacetime maritime disasters. In the subsequent investigation, lookout Frederick Fleet testified that if he had binoculars, he would have spotted the iceberg sooner. The ship would thus have had more reaction time to steer away from danger.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.