By the morning of April 15, 1912 (100 years ago tomorrow) it was pretty much universally known that the RMS Titanic had hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic during the night. What was not yet known was the fate of the ship and its passengers.
In an age long before 24 hour news channels, newspapers cobbled together breaking news from scant and often contradictory wireless reports.
As a result, on the morning of April 15, 1912 newspapers across the country almost unanimously reported that the Titanic had struck an iceberg, but that no lives had been lost.
“Dewey Defeats Truman” may be the most famous inaccurate headline in history, but with 20/20 hindsight the headlines of April 15 have to be among the eeriest ever to appear in newsprint.
(source: The Fitchburg Daily Sentinel, April 15, 1912.)
