Six Bizarre Conspiracy Theories About the Titanic Disaster
You won’t believe what people have been saying over the years.
Significant events can attract false rumors and hypotheses that do more harm than good. This holds true for both triumphant moments like the Apollo 11 moon landing and tragic ones like the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., the attacks on September 11, and the sinking of the Titanic.
The R.M.S. Titanic sank in the North Atlantic late on the evening of April 14, 1912, killing 1,517 of the 2,223 people aboard. People have spent the better part of a century trying to explain the sad and seemingly random sinking of the Titanic by pointing to supposedly foreboding indicators of bad luck that were disregarded or by concocting intricate conspiracy theories about the “true” reason it sank.
We debunk some of the tragedy’s most pervasive falsehoods and conspiracy theories here!
1. J.P. Morgan engineered the catastrophe to wipe out his competition.
One popular hypothesis suggests that wealthy banker J.P. Morgan orchestrated the sinking of the Titanic to eliminate three rich competitors: Jacob Astor, Isidor Straus, and Benjamin Guggenheim.
