On the night of April 14, 1912, the greatest passenger ship ever built collided at 21 knots with a huge iceberg in the frigid North Atlantic, 500 miles east of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The “unsinkable” Titanic took a mere four hours to pass bow first under the waves, and the liner Carpathia arrived an hour later, first on the scene. The world waited as the horrific details emerged, describing a maritime disaster of unprecedented proportions, with a huge loss of life, heroic rescue efforts and, soon enough, the pointing fingers of blame. But it was 1912, and not all that many years since Marconi obtained his first radio patents; the creation of RCA was still seven years in the future. Newspapers were literally the only access to breaking news, and people relied on them in ways very hard for us to understand. Dating from the day after the sinking, we have an unbelievable collection of newspapers which chronicled the event as it unfolded. From The Chicago Daily Tribune, issues from April 16 and 17; from The World (New York), April 17-25. There have of course been some great books and movies on the subject, but reading these papers in sequence, struggling to assimilate each detail as it became known, is as close as we’ll ever get to being there at the time. The original newsprint measures 17” x 21-23 1/2”, and is in overall VG condition, with some darkening at edges, but little fading. Left margins show just a bit of loss, due to having been bound in the past.