WASHINGTON (AP) — After an entire century that included two
high-profile government investigations and countless books and
movies, we’re still debating what really caused the Titanic to
hit an iceberg and sink on that crystal-clear chilly night.
Maybe there’s more to blame than human folly and hubris. Maybe
we can fault freak atmospheric conditions that caused a mirage
or an even rarer astronomical event that sent icebergs into
shipping lanes. Those are two of the newer theories being
proposed by a Titanic author and a team of astronomers. But the
effort to find natural causes that could have contributed to the
sinking may also be a quest for an excuse — anything to avoid
gazing critically into a mirror, say disaster experts and
Titanic historians. New theories and research are important “but
at its most basic what happened is they failed to heed warnings
and they hit the iceberg because they were going too fast,” said
James Delgado, director of maritime heritage at the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Admini