DAILY ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

There's a scene in Titanic in which Jack and Rose climb onto the side of the ship as it sinks. Rose turns her head and sees a gentleman with a mustache, looking terrified. That man was based on Charles Joughin who was a badass in real life. He was interrogated by the British Titanic inquiry, which was tasked with finding out how the Titanic had sunk. Below is his interrogation: "What did you do with the children when you put them into the boat? - Handed them into the boat or dropped them in. Threw them in? - Threw them in.  And what did you do with the mother? - We wanted to throw her in, and I think she preferred to try and step in. What happened? - She missed her footing. You said that you never went into your boat. Why did not you go, seeing that you were in charge? - I would have set a bad example if I had jumped into the boat. None of the men felt...

The year was 1933, and Amelia Earhart received an invitation to a White House event. During the dinner, Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt discreetly left the White House to embark on a joyride in an airplane. Earhart took control of an Eastern Air Transport twin-engine Curtis Condor at Hoover Field in Arlington, Virginia, and they soared into the sky. Eleanor Roosevelt, who had recently acquired her student pilot's license, briefly assumed control while airborne. She later told The Baltimore Sun, "I'd love to do it myself. I make no bones about it. It does mark an epoch, doesn't it, when a girl in an evening dress and slippers can pilot a plane at night." Recently, I learned that Earhart insisted on an open marriage with her husband, George Putnam. Before their marriage, she composed a letter expressing her sentiments: "On our life together, I want you to understand I shall not hold ...

The mummy of Amenhotep I was discovered in good condition and has never been unwrapped. It was found with an intact cartonnage funerary mask and had been re-wrapped by 21st Dynasty restorers in an orange shroud held in place with horizontal and vertical strips of bandaging. Numerous floral garlands had been placed over the shroud and descended almost to the feet of the mummy. Georg Schweinfurth, a professional botanist who examined the floral decorations not long after the mummy's discovery, identified the red, yellow and blue flowers of which the garlands were composed. X-rays published in 1967 reveal a bead girdle and a small amulet still within the mummy wrappings. They also show a post-mortem fracture of the lower right arm, which think probably occurred during the 21st Dynasty re-wrapping. Although broken, the king's arms had been placed acros...

On September 15, 1896, a collision occurred between two trains approximately 14 miles north of Waco, Texas. This collision resulted in the boilers of the locomotives exploding, sending debris flying across a wide area and causing the unfortunate deaths of at least two onlookers, with many more sustaining injuries. However, what makes this incident truly remarkable is that despite the chaos, no one in the vicinity attempted to flee. Instead, in the aftermath of the crash, a multitude of people from the surrounding area rushed toward the scene, eagerly collecting fragments of the scattered debris. The reason for this unusual behavior was that the enormous crowd of around 40,000 individuals had actually anticipated this collision and had paid to witness the spectacle. From 1896 to the 1930s, orchestrated train collisions became a major attraction at numerous U.S. fairs and festivals. This u...

Chess players on Tsvetnoy Boulevard in Moscow during the 1950s. One of my favorite chess stories is the one about Russian Grandmaster Ossip Bernstein. In 1918, when he was 36 years old, Bernstein was arrested in the city of Odessa by the Bolshevik secret police whose purpose was to investigate and punish "counterrevolutionary" crimes. Bernstein was to be shot by a firing squad for serving as a legal advisor to the banking industry. On the day of his execution, Bernstein watched as the firing squad lined up before him. At the last minute, a commanding officer asked to see the list of prisoner names and recognized Bernstein's name as he was a chess enthusiast. After confronting Bernstein about his identity, the commanding officer offered him a deal he couldn't refuse. They would play a game of chess. If Bernstein won the match, he would win his life and freedom. However, if he drew or lost,...

While cleaning up the aftermath of the World Trade Center's collapse, crews discovered a shipwreck located 7 feet below the foundation. This shipwreck was found to date back to 1773. In 2010, excavators in New York City's Lower Manhattan unearthed the remains of a wooden ship buried deep in the ground. A study revealed that the ship was constructed using timber sourced from old-growth forests in southeastern Pennsylvania around 1773. Interestingly, Independence Hall and other buildings from the Revolutionary era in Philadelphia were also built using timber harvested from the same region and during the same period. Edward Cook, a tree ring scientist at Columbia University, confirmed this connection. The concept of using tree rings to determine time is based on how trees grow. Each year, they form a new ring of wood around their trunk. In favorable conditions, trees grow well, resul...