There are countless interesting tidbits of information that escape the average person’s knowledge.
I’d say that’s mostly due to the sheer amount of it; there’s no way it can all be shared by media sources or taught in school rooms. But whatever the reason, there’s a tremendous amount of more or less unknown stuff out there regarding what humans have done or caused over the years.
Here are a couple of random examples of historic occurrences that most people probably aren’t aware of (including me, until I recently found out about them).
Did you know an ocean liner sank in Canada in 1914, killing more than 1,000 people?
The ship was called the Empress of Ireland, and was on its way from Quebec City, Quebec, to Liverpool, England. But it never made it into the open ocean.
While the sinking of the Titanic in November 2012 is one of history’s best-known human tragedies, the Empress of Ireland catastrophe from about two years later is one of its best-kept secrets.
At about 2 a.m. May 29, thick fog reduced visibility on the St. Lawrence River to a bare minimum. The captain of the Empress was horrified when he suddenly saw the Norwegian coal carrier Storstad dead ahead at short range.
There was no chance to avoid impact, and the Storstad tore into the Empress’ starboard side. Water quickly filled the ship’s lower decks before watertight doors could be closed and came in through open portholes in higher decks.
The ship lifted so fast and violently that lifeboats couldn’t be launched.
Incredibly, the Empress went down in only about 14 minutes and 1,012 people perished. A pair of Canadian government boats responded from about 50 miles away, but arrived after the Empress had sunk and their crews could only pluck a few survivors and many bodies from the frigid water.
Amazingly, the captains of the two ships had acknowledged each other when they were about eight miles apart, but to no avail. Several legal battles followed, with the two sides pointing fingers and contradictory testimonies clouding the aftermath.
Did you know that a major civil war has been raging for many years in Myanmar?
A military coup took place in Myanmar (a southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma) on Feb. 1, 2021. Ever since, numerous armed groups and factions have jostled for control of various parts of the country, resulting in millions of people being negatively affected, tens of thousands of buildings destroyed and countless casualties.
Since gaining independence from Great Britain in 1948, Myanmar has constantly experienced difficulty with governing a diverse multi-ethnic population.
And the situation doesn’t seem to be close to improving. Looking at a map of Myanmar that shows the large number of pockets of control by different factions clearly depicts how divided things are.
And the average citizen of Myanmar is simply too poor to escape the madness.
I’m guessing the reason most people aren’t aware of the situation there is at least in part due to the lack of any influence by big oil companies and the subsequent lack of publication.
Anyway, I don’t expect a blockbuster movie to be produced about the Empress of Ireland, nor a primetime documentary about the sad state of affairs in Myanmar. But those two subjects just caught my attention recently, and I figured they were interesting enough to share.
