It was supposed to be the unsinkable ship, a shining paragon of man’s power and ingenuity. She had four resturants, a swimming pool, and a fully equipped dark room for photography. She had water tight compartments and a powerful telegraph system. But she did not have enough life boats for the 1,324 passengers on board.
On this day in history, the Titanic hit an iceberg in the chilly Atlantic Ocean and sunk two hours later.
At 11:40 pm on April 14, the ship hit an iceberg on her starboard side. The lookout crew did not have binoculars which is thought to have prevented the accident. Five of the ships watertight compartments were breached upon hitting the iceberg and the ship began to sink bow first into the ocean. Passengers on the ship were not told immediately of the danger even though the ship had no hope of surviving. When the evacuation did happen, the third class passengers were left to fend for themselves.
The crew was ill-prepared for a large scale evacuation of the ship and many lifeboats were lowered before they were completely full. A “Women and children first” rule was exercised which led to 638 of the 768 adult male passengers going down with the ship. Two hours and forty minutes after the Titanic first hit the iceberg, the ship’s front deck plunged underwater and the ship split in two. All those remaining on the ship fell into -2 degrees celsius sea water and nearly all died of hypothermia.
Nearly an hour and a half after the sinking, the RMS Carpathia arrived on the scene and picked up all 713 survivors. The ship docked in New York City three days after the sinking and the survivors were eager to tell their story. After the sinking, a public enquiry was set up in  the United States and Britain to determine what had led to that fateful night. It was revealed that the Titanic was going too fast through the ice field, the life boats were not properly filled nor crewed, and most importantly there were not enough lifeboats for everyone on the ship, crew included.
In the wake of the disaster, new maritime regulations were imposed and the International Ice Patrol was set up to monitor the icebergs in the North Atlantic and hopefully prevent a disaster the size of the Titanic from happening again.  Efforts were made to recover the bodies lost at sea and memorials were set up in Belfast, Southampton, and New York. The Titanic later became a pop culture phenomenon when James Cameron’s eponymous film was released and because of the movie the ship has remained an important mark on the pages of history.
On April 14, the Columbia Women’s Lacrosse team played at Cosmo Park, Time for Twos was held at the Daniel Boone Library and “Honk” was performed at West Junior High School. But 100 years ago and 2,106.1 miles away, the unsinkable ship dove into the Atlantic Ocean.
By Jessica Jost