7 FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO ALMOST BOARDED THE TITANIC—BUT DIDN'T

On April 12, 1912, the RMS Titanic set sail from England to New York. It was declared to be the unsinkable ship. Yet in the early hours of April 14, 1912, the unsinkable ship sank. The maritime disaster took the lives of approximately 1,500 people who either sank with the ship or died in the freezing Atlantic water waiting for rescue.

Even without the internet, the sinking of the Titanic was the biggest news story in the world at the time, and remains fascinating even today for many people. The events of the Titanic have been popularized with dozens of books, documentaries and Hollywood feature films, including the 1997 blockbuster directed by James Cameron and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

While many are familiar with how the tragedy unfolded—an iceberg puncturing the ship, radio protocols not allowing for proper warning, a shortage of lifeboats—the stories of the people who managed to miss the disaster at the last minute are lesser known. Multiple prominent world figures were set to sail on the ship, but didn't quite make it on to the maiden voyage. In the months leading up to the Titanic's departure from Southampton, United Kingdom, for New York City, the ship was extremely well publicized with the who's who of the early 1900s desperate to procure tickets.

Here's a list of seven well-known men who planned to sail on the Titanic, but never made it onboard.

1. Milton Hershey

Milton Hershey, the founder of the Hershey's chocolate company, sent $300 to the White Star Line to reserve a pair of Titanic tickets for him and his wife in the spring of 1912. The couple spent most of their winters in the French Riviera and were set to sail on Titanic's maiden voyage.  Hershey needed to get back to America on urgent business and ended up finding a spot on the German ship Amerika. That ended up sending warning messages to the Titanic about the dangerous amount of ice.

2. Guglielmo Marconi

The inventor of the radio was also supposed to be on the Titanic's maiden voyage after being given a free ticket. However, his stenographer got sick shortly before boarding the ship, according to the 1926 memoir of Marconi's daughter, My Father Marconi.  Marconi decided to head to the United States from Ireland three days earlier on the Lusitania, because he trusted their stenographer more than the one onboard the Titanic. Ironically, those who were saved from the Titanic disaster were rescued because Marconi had invented the radio.

3. J.P. Morgan

John Pierpoint Morgan—more commonly known as "J.P. Morgan," namesake and founder of J.P. Morgan Private Bank—was present at the Titanic launch party in 1911 because he also founded the International Mercantile Marine, which owned the Titanic's builder, White Star Line. He was set to embark on the maiden voyage, but at the last minute, decided to extend his stay in France. Historians have still not discovered the exact reason Morgan decided to continue his travels abroad, but having a few more weeks of European adventure likely saved his life.

4. Henry Clay Frick

Henry Clay Frick was the chairman of Carnegie Steele when the Titanic was built, so complimentary tickets were gifted to him and his wife. His wife sprained her ankle while they were touring Italy shortly before the voyage, so they remained on the continent to give her time to heal. Frick's suite went instead to J. Bruce Ismay, owner of the White Star Line. Ismay survived the sinking by getting on an early lifeboat, which earned him ridicule for the rest of his life.

5. George Washington Vanderbilt II

The Vanderbilt name is famous for many reasons. Like the Rockefellers and Carnegies, the Vanderbilt family had a portfolio of railroad and steel businesses that helped create an empire. George Washington Vanderbilt II is most well known for commissioning the largest standing monument of Vanderbilt wealth—the Biltmore Estate in western North Carolina. In 1888, he oversaw the building of the 250-room mansion, which has sense been partially opened to the public. In 1912, Vanderbilt and his wife had tickets to ride on the maiden voyage of the Titanic, but the couple were reportedly warned the trip could be dangerous and canceled their tickets a week before the ship was to set sail.

6. Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Dreiser, the famous 20th-century novelist, had traveled to Europe to collect stories for his memoir, A Traveler at Forty. He would later write in the book that he was looking forward to seeing the opulence of the Titanic to add to the novel. At the last minute, his publisher urged him to book passage on a smaller and cheaper ship that left Dover, England, two days before the Titanic. The decision ended up saving his life.

7. John R. Mott

YMCA chairman and evangelist John R. Mott was one of several prominent society members offered a free ticket on the Titanic. However, he and his colleague decided to travel on the more humble ship, the Lapland. According to Mott biographer C. Howard Hopkins, when Mott arrived in New York and heard the news of the Titanic ship, he looked at his travel companion and said, "The Good Lord must have more work for us to do."

From The Book Of Useless Information—part 3 of 3

This is the final week of my three trivia blogs featuring bits and pieces from The Book Of Useless Information, an official publication of The Useless Information Society with a copyright of 2006.  I'm picking some items at random from the last few sections of the book.  And there is one fact that jumped out at me as being absolutely wrong…I have attributed it to an overlooked typo rather than misinformation.  I'll share this with you at the end of this week's blog.

For now…I'll pick up here where I left off last week.

AMAZING DISCOVERIES:  Construction workers' hard hats were invented and first used in the construction of Hoover Dam in 1933.  Thomas Edison, credited with the light bulb (he didn't actually invent the light bulb, he created a filament that lasted long enough to make the light bulb viable), was afraid of the dark.  A normal raindrop falls at about seven miles an hour.  An inch of snow falling evenly on one acre of ground is equivalent to about 2,715 gallons of water.  A cubic mile of fog is made up of less than a gallon of water.  Meteorologists claim they're right 85 percent of the time.  Buzz Aldrin's mother's maiden name was Moon.  The Apollo 11 moon lander had only twenty seconds of fuel left when it landed.  A manned rocket can reach the moon in less time than it took a stagecoach to travel the length of England.  Stars come in different colors—hot stars give off blue light and the cooler ones give off red light.  Earth is traveling through space at 660,000 miles per hour.  By weight, the sun is 70 percent hydrogen, 28 percent helium, 1.5 percent carbon-nitrogen-oxygen, and 0.5 percent all other elements.  A bolt of lightning can strike the earth with the equivalent of one hundred million volts and generate temperatures five times hotter than those found on the sun's surface.  In 1949, Popular Mechanics said computers of the future would weigh no more than five tons.  The shortest commercial intercontinental flight in the world is from Gibraltar in Europe to Tangier in Africa, a distance of thirty-four miles and flight time of twenty minutes.  A large flawless emerald is worth more than a similarly large flawless diamond.  A jiffy is an actual unit of time the equivalent of one-hundredth of a second.

WILD KINGDOM:  A baby blue whale is twenty-five feet long at birth.  In 1859 twenty-four rabbits were released in Australia and within six years the population grew to two million.  Human beings and the two-toed sloth are the only land animals that typically mate face to face.  An estimated 80 percent of all creatures on Earth have six legs.  A square mile of fertile earth has thirty-two million earthworms in it.  The original name for butterfly was the flutterby.  Grasshoppers have white blood.  A single strand from the golden spider's web is as strong as a steel wire of the same size.  Contrary to common belief, reptiles are never slimy, their scales have few glands and are usually silky to the touch.  The gecko lizard can run on the ceiling without falling because its toes have flaps of skin that act like suction cups.  Alligators cannot move backward.  The only continent without reptiles or snakes is Antarctica.  A group of frogs is called an army.  A group of kangaroos is called a mob.  Male monkeys lose the hair on their heads in the same manner as men do.  It is physically impossible for pigs to look up at the sky.  Bats are the only mammals that can fly.  Time and erosion have erased 99 percent of all dinosaur footprints.  Reindeer like to eat bananas.  Moose have very poor vision, some have even tried to mate with cars.  The night vision of tigers is six times better than that of humans.  Jaguars are scared of dogs.  Walking catfish of Florida can stay out of the water for eighty days.  Shark's fossil records date back more than twice as far as those of the dinosaurs.  Sea otters have the world's densest fur—a million hairs per square inch.

STATISTICS:  It would take more than 150 years to drive a car to the sun.  More than 10 percent of all the salt produced annually in the world is used in winter to de-ice American roads.  Most fatal car accidents happen on a Saturday.  The world record for carrying a milk bottle on your head is twenty-four miles.  You're more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than a poisonous spider.  About 6 percent of murdered American men are killed by either their wife or girlfriend…or their wife who caught them with their girlfriend.  Experienced waitresses say that married men tip better than unmarried men.  You are more likely to get attacked by a cow than a shark.

And on the last page of The Book Of Useless Information, it says:  approximately 97 percent of all statistics are made up.  :)

And back on the first of these three trivia blogs, that error I said I caught?  It was in the first section of HALL OF FAME.  It said, "In 1812, after being shot in the chest, Theodore Roosevelt finished a speech he was delivering before he accepted any medical help."  The incident is true, but Teddy Roosevelt wasn't even born until 1858.  The reality is that it happened on October 14, 1912, a century later.  As I said, certainly a typo that no one caught. 

From The Book Of Useless Information—part 2 of 3

This is the second week of my three weeks of trivia blogs featuring bits and pieces from The Book Of Useless Information, an official publication of The Useless Information Society with a copyright of 2006.  I can't personally vouch for any of these facts as I have not verified them, but they were in a published book rather than social media. :)

So…I'll pick up here where I left off last week with the next few categories in the book.

AROUND THE HOUSE:  A deck of cards should be shuffled seven times to properly play with them. Playing cards in India are round. On the new U.S. $100 bill, the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10. The Australian $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 notes are made of plastic. More people use blue toothbrushes than red ones. Alaska has more outhouses than any other state. There are more Barbie dolls in Italy than there are Canadians in Canada. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

HISTORY'S MYSTERIES:  A old Virginia law on the books requires all bathtubs to be kept in the yard, not inside the house. Persia had a pony express many years before Christ where riders delivered mail across Asia Minor. Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the death of their cats. When some mummies were unwrapped, the bandages were a total of 1.5 miles in length. In ancient Greece, women counted their age from the day they were married. The Roman goddess of sorcery, hounds, and the crossroads is named Trivia (tri referring to the number 3). The Chinese ideogram for trouble depicts two women living under one roof. On July 28, 1945, a B-25 bomber airplane crashed into the 79^th floor of the Empire State Building (and no, it was not a terrorist act). Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States in 1789. In 1890 New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote. In London in the 1700s, you could buy insurance against going to hell.

ROAM IF YOU WANT TO:  The Frankford Avenue Bridge built in 1697 in Philadelphia crosses Pennypack Creek and is the oldest U.S. bridge in continuous use. In Washington, D.C., no building can be built taller than the Washington Monument. There are more than six hundred rooms in Buckingham Palace. The full name of Los Angeles is El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula (no wonder it's often referred to simply as L.A.). Harvard uses Yale brand locks on their buildings and Yale uses Best brand locks. It is forbidden to fly aircraft over the Taj Mahal. Central Park opened in 1876 and is nearly twice the size of the country of Monaco. The San Diego Zoo has the largest collection of animals in the world.

HOLY MATTERS:  The color of mourning in Turkey is violet, while in most Muslim countries and China it's white. In the early eighteenth century, two-thirds of Portugal was owned by the Church. The youngest pope was eleven years old. Snow angels originated from medieval Jewish mystics who practiced rolling in the snow to purge themselves of evil urges.

BUSINESS RELATIONS:  Japan's currency is the most difficult to counterfeit. The largest employer in the world is the Indian railway system, employing more than a million people. The sale of vodka makes up ten percent of Russian government income. In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

THE SPORTING GOODS:  A baseball has exactly 108 stitches. Bank robber John Dillinger played professional baseball. In 1936 American track star Jesse Owens beat a racehorse over a one hundred yard course…and the horse was given a head start. It takes three thousand cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs. Before 1850, golf balls were made of leather and stuffed with feathers. Boxing is considered the easiest sport for gamblers to fix. Tug-of-war was an Olympic event between 1900 and 1920. Professional hockey players skate at an average speed of 20 to 25 miles per hour. Karate originated in India.

Next week is the third and final week of this series of trivia blogs.  Make sure to stop by and see what other bits of useless information I have for you.

From The Book Of Useless Information—part 1 of 3

While looking for something in one of my bookcases, I came across a book I had forgotten about…a book I purchased several years ago—The Book Of Useless Information, an official publication of The Useless Information Society.  It has a 2006 copyright date which means some of this information could possibly no longer be current.

I'm a long time (as well as big time) trivia fan.  In fact, I've done several blogs over the years about trivia.  I immediately became distracted and started randomly flipping through the book.  Half an hour later I was still standing in front of the bookcase thumbing through the pages.

I decided to share some of this useless information with you.  The contents of the book are broken down into thirteen categories which I'm going to break up into three blogs, this week and continuing over the next two weeks.  I'll share a few items from each category.

I did discover one error while thumbing through the pages.  I think it could more accurately be called an oversight, a typo that was missed during the editing/proof reading process, rather than an actual error in research.  I'll share that with you at the end of the third of this series of trivia blogs.

HALL OF FAME:  Thomas Jefferson anonymously submitted design plans for the White House, they were rejected.  Andrew Jackson was the only president to believe that the world is flat.  James Garfield could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other—simultaneously.  Gerald Ford was once a male model.  Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.  Adolph Hitler was Time magazine's Man Of The Year in 1938 (keep in mind that Time magazine awards that position to the person they feel has had the most impact on the news which is not the same thing as someone great to be admired).  The shortest British monarch was Charles I, who was four-feet nine-inches tall.  When young and impoverished, Pablo Picasso kept warm by burning his own paintings.  Christopher Columbus had blond hair.

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT:  Tom Hanks is related to Abraham Lincoln.  Tommy Lee Jones and Vice President Al Gore were freshmen roommates at Harvard.  Elizabeth Taylor appeared on the cover of Life magazine more than anyone else.  Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.  In high school, Robin Williams was voted the least likely to succeed.  Mick Jagger attended the London School of Economics for two years.  Parker Brothers prints about $50 billion worth of Monopoly money in a year, more than the real money issued annually by the U.S. Government.  Kermit the Frog is left-handed.  Peanuts is the world's most read comic strip.  Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.  Alfred Hitchcock never won an Academy Award for directing.

THE LITERARY WORLD:  During his entire lifetime, Herman Melville's classic Moby Dick sold only fifty copies.  Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at the age of nineteen.  Tom Sawyer was the first novel written on a typewriter.  Arthur Conan Doyle never had Sherlock Holmes say "Elementary, my dear Watson."  The word cop came from the English term Constable On Patrol.  The most used letter in the English language is E with Q being the least used.  The oldest word in the English language is town.  The only fifteen letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.  Bookkeeper is the only word in the English language with three consecutive double letters.  In England in the 1880s, pants was considered a dirty word.  Polish is the only word in the English language that, when capitalized, is changed from a noun or a verb to a nationality.

ON THE MENU:  On average, there are 178 sesame seeds on each McDonald's Big Mac bun.  Coca-Cola was originally green.  A full seven percent of the Irish barley crop goes to the production of Guinness beer.  The first man to distill bourbon whiskey was a Baptist preacher in 1789.  Almonds are a member of the peach family.  You use more calories eating celery than there are in celery itself.  The oldest known vegetable is the pea.  Tomatoes and cucumbers are fruits.  There is no such thing as blue food, even blueberries are purple.  The only food that does not spoil is honey.

This is only a small sampling of the first four sections of the book.  Anyone have any interesting trivia bits that fall within these four categories?

Next week I'll continue with some samples from the second group of four sections.  And the week after that I'll do the final five sections.