The Titanic and New Entertainment: The History Of Sports, Movies, Three Bestselling Bookseries and the Tragic End of the Titanic

The Titanic and New Entertainment: The History of Sports, Movies, Three Bestselling Bookseries and the Tragic End of the Titanic by: Patrick

After the production of new inventions in the industrial revolution, suddenly people in America had more free time to spend.  They could play sports, watch a movie, or read a book.

Baseball is nicknamed “America’s Pastime.”  This sport started out as just an informal sport but a man by the name of Alexander Cartwright had gold fever and he helped spread the sport to the west.  He even wrote the official rules for baseball.  One of the most famous baseball players was Babe Ruth.  Up until Babe Ruth’s time, baseball games were separated between whites and blacks.  But then the baseball committee allowed an African American by the name of Jackie Robinson to play.  The move they made was risky, but it was worth it.

Football is one of today’s most popular sports.  Its roots can go back to a popular sport called rugby.  It became a collegiate sport in the 1870s, but in the 1960s, football became a professional sport.  But because of the rate of injuries in the sport, more rules and better protective equipment have been put into place.  Today football has become the most popular sport in history.  The Super Bowl has also been ranked as the most watched television program in all of America.

Basketball was invented by a trainer named James Naismith.  He was looking for a less dangerous alternative to football.  The sport started out where players would throw balls into peach baskets.  But when the public found out about the sport, the National Basketball Association, or the NBA, was formed.  Today basketball is an Olympic sport.

In ancient times, Athens, Greece played a series of events called the Olympics.  After Greece fell to the Roman Empire, the Olympics were forgotten.  But one day in the 1800s, someone came up with the idea to revive the Olympics.  In 1896, the first Olympics were played in Athens, Greece under the supervision of the International Olympic Committee.

However, one new industry would become more popular and would cast its shadow over all the new sports.  That would be the movie industry.  Ever since Thomas Edison invented his movie making and movie viewing devices, new films called silent films were viewed by other people.  One of these films is called The Great Train Robbery.  The story is about these bandits who hide in a ticket office.  They hijack a train and they steal money from a train car.  They then steal from the other passengers.  They hijack the train and they make their escape in the end the authorities catch the bandits either dead or alive.

A man named Edward Stratemeyer was famous for writing children’s stories.  But he needed help writing them.  So, he formed the Stratemeyer Syndicate and hired other authors to write other books based on his ideas.  These books include: The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and the Bobbsey Twins and for a time they were best sellers.

The RMS, or Royal Mail Steamer, Titanic was one of the other ocean liner ships built.  The ship had state of the art watertight compartments and remote-control hatches.  One of the magazines published said that the ship was “unsinkable.”  But on its maiden voyage to New York state, it passed close to the coast of Newfoundland.  It had been warned by other ships in the area that there were icebergs in the area.

The lookouts were not using binoculars and it was dark, so they didn’t see the iceberg until it was too late.  The captain tried to avoid it, but the ship scraped the side of the iceberg tearing of some of the rivets in the hull causing a leak that overwhelmed the watertype compartments.  Soon the ship started sinking.  One of the ship’s designers estimated that it would take two hours or less for the ship to sink.  All of the passengers would have made it out fine if there were enough lifeboats.  This was the beginning of the command women and children first.  This meant that very few men survived.  Before it sunk, the Titanic managed to contact another ship that it needed help and that very same ship rescued the surviving passengers.

The story of the Titanic can relate to us.  We as humans have to much pride and one day that same pride will be our downfall, just like the sinking of the Titanic led to the fall of over 1,500 passengers.