Sometimes courage, altruism and hope make all the difference — If a 21-years-old British boy had gone straight to bed after his shift ended, 109 years ago, today the world would be a different place. Young Harold Cottam was the wireless operator aboard RMS Carpathia in 1912, and there would likely be no Titanic survivors around if he had not…

Fast, sleek and opulent, the legendary liner inspired the name of a beer — “Hurray for the Rex! The greatest thing the regime ever built!” In Fellini’s Oscar-winning 1973 movie Amarcord, the SS Rex comes out of the darkness, glistening with lights like a giant Christmas tree. …

An act of spite turned two invaluable historical artifacts to ashes “I guess that anything we manage to save from history is a miracle,” Donna Tartt wrote in her 2014 Pulitzer winning novel The Goldfinch. I suppose it must be true, considering how many historical and artistic treasures we managed to…

Men may govern, but women rule — Anybody who has ever watched the 1998 flick Cinderella — a retelling of the fairytale set in Renaissance-era France — likely remembers one iconic scene. About halfway through the movie the main character — played by Drew Barrymore donning some memorable gowns— and her love interest are kidnapped by…

Ignored by her husband. Loved by her people. True fashion icon. — Margherita of Savoy, the wife of King Umberto I of Italy and the first Queen of a united Italy, was a tall, blue-eyed blonde. She was no beauty, but she had style — tons of it. Love Triangle The marriage between Margherita, 17, and Umberto, 24, was not what you’d call a…

The Amerigo Vespucci is 90 years old and doesn’t look it — On September 1, 2022, the colossal USS George H.W. Bush met the tiny school ship Amerigo Vespucci in the sunny Mediterranean sea. The contrast between the Nimitz-class supercarrier — 1,092 (333 m) feet long and over 100,000 tons — and the 330 ft (101 m) long, slightly over 4,000 tons…

The Divine Marquise was the OG Lady Gaga — Tall and pencil-thin, as pale as a corpse, with a live boa constrictor draped around her neck like a scarf and two cheetahs on diamond-studded leashes, Luisa Casati Stampa was sure to turn heads wherever she went. The daughter of a textile magnate who had amassed a formidable amount of…

Sabir was the Esperanto of the sea — Learning to speak sabir — a mix of Italian, French, Spanish, and Arabic — was essential if you were a sailor or a merchant in the Middle Ages. It also came in handy if you were an Ottoman pirate. Maybe even a banker. Or a Christian renegade hiding in Algiers…

The things you do for love — A young prince in love with a beautiful maiden, an old king determined to keep them apart by all means: sounds like a fairytale straight out of a children’s book. But King Pedro I of Portugal and Dona Inês de Castro’s love story doesn’t have a happy ending: it’s a…