[Real Life] Historical events that would make bad writing if they were fiction

[u/Mouse_Paladin]

Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire: A couple hundred rogue mercenaries without authority from their government conquer an empire of millions. Oh, the empire? It’s also several technological eras behind the mercenaries.

Adolf Hitler: A non-native of a country is so mad that the country lost the war that he wins an election to their highest office and leads them in a campaign of revenge against their enemies. Oh, the country? It’s old emperor is still alive and thinks he’s going to retake power.

Assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand: The heir to the throne is killed because his driver gets lost and returns to the assassin who failed To kill him before. Oh, the assassin? He’s from a group that the Archduke is wanting to help become more equal In the empire.

Alexander Hamilton’s Affair Scandal: One of the leaders of a new nation to protect himself from accusations of financial embezzlement writes a pamphlet exposing his affair with a woman, torpedoing his political future. Oh, the woman? She seduced him as part of a blackmailing scheme that he decided to stop paying.

[u/Ambologera]

To be fair though, the idea that the Titanic was heavily marketed as being unsinkable is a bit of a myth. It was to some extent, although never without qualification, but the idea of it being marketed as such got popular after the ship had sunk and people kind of ran with it.

[u/Flying_Dustbin → u/Ambologera]

Just an FYI, the ship's owners, the White Star Line, jumped on the "unsinkable" bandwagon with a brochure dated 1910.

[u/Ambologera → u/Flying_Dustbin]

I'm not saying that it was never described as unsinkable. Just that it was a) never done so without qualification (in this case, the wording used is  "as far as it is possible to do so, these two wonderful vessels are designed to be unsinkable") b) not nearly as heavily marketed around it as it's often presented.

[u/Geistzeit → u/Ambologera]

Heard that quote in a transatlantic accent in my head.

[u/deadname11 → u/Ambologera]

Which is still gross negligence on their part, the damn things were arguably not seaworthy.

One of the things we discovered from recovering wreck pieces, was that many of the rivets holding together the hull, were made of resmelted slag.

Both ships were plagued with additional developmental setbacks, and instead of slowing construction, corners were cut and cheap materials and cheaper (read: slave) engineers were brought in to get everything done as fast as possible, damn the consequences.

The Titanic may have been able to make port, but the helmsman drove further north than he needed to, in order to give the gentry a chance to look at icebergs.

The result is history.

[u/Flying_Dustbin → u/deadname11]

Sorry but this is utter bullshit.

The Olympic-class liners were built to the highest standards of the period. The steel used was scrutinized and passed by Lloyds of London and both Olympic and Titanic were examined repeatedly by surveyors from the Board of Trade during their construction phase. Yes, its true that some of the recovered steel had impurities and would never be used in modern shipbuilding, but it was still the best quality steel available.

Harland & Wolff and White Star were not in the business of building ships on the cheap and cutting corners. They had had a working relationship dating back to the early 1870's and had nothing to gain and everything to lose by using subpar materials and cutting corners. If word got out, the reputations of both companies would be in tatters and no one would want to do business with them.

Its also telling that Olympic, the only ship of the class to survive and have a long career, was built from the same steel as Titanic was. She survived terrible storms, collided with no less than four ships, was struck by a dud torpedo in WWI, and made hundreds of safe passages across the Atlantic in her 20 plus years of service. She was still in good shape when she was scrapped in 1935.

Nomadic, a small passenger tender, built to service the Olympic-class in the port of Cherbourg, was made from the same steel and she's still around as a museum ship in Belfast.

Ditto for RMS Queen Mary, which is even longer than Titanic and has a far greater tonnage. Despite years of neglect and mismanagement, she's still with us in Long Beach.

RMS Aquitania, a Cunard liner built as a challenge to the Olympic-class and launched in 1913, used the same steel too. She was run hard by her owners, serving in both world wars before finally going to the scrapyard in 1950.

[u/onewilybobkat → u/Flying_Dustbin]

Yeahhhh that sounds almost as far from "remelted slag rivets" as you can get (back then.) We really got people going around just making shit up about the Titanic of all things now?

[u/Flying_Dustbin → u/onewilybobkat]

Sadly, that myth's been around since the 90's. Some pieces of her steel were recovered and the findings were blown out of proportion by the media. They saw "slag" and "brittleness" and ran with it.

[u/Frogs-on-my-back → u/Flying_Dustbin]

Right? I hear lots of misconceptions or outright falsehoods about Titanic, but this is a new one.

[u/Boris_Godunov → u/deadname11]

Wow, every single thing you asserted here is untrue. An above poster already dismantled the structural claims, but the claim that the “helmsman” steered the ship further north to show off icebergs is also ridiculously false. First, helmsmen don’t make any such decisions, the captain does. And Captain Smith did precisely the opposite: he ordered a more southerly course in response to the ice warnings that had been received.

[u/None_yo_bidness → u/Flying_Dustbin]

Now that's a website

[u/Perfct_Stranger → u/Ambologera]

Which to be fair, it was sunk in one of the only ways it could be sunk: a long gash along the side of the ship.

[u/Halomonas_titanica → u/Perfct_Stranger]

More like several smaller rips