Author: openjargon

• Foreign-born workers are leading the increase in the US labor force, Fitch Ratings said.
• But a labor demand cooldown may cause an oversupply in the market, it cautioned.
• Jobs growth in the government sector is also fueling the labor market.

US labor momentum seems stuck in high gear, after March added yet another blowout jobs report.

But a simple explanation could lie in US immigration trends, as a surge of foreign-born workers is propelling labor expansion, Fitch Ratings reported on Thursday.

"Increases in the U.S. labor force post-pandemic have been led by foreign-born workers, which represented 19% of the U.S. labor force at YE 2023, higher than 17% as of YE19," the ratings agency wrote. "The foreign-born labor participation rate is 66%, more than the native-born participation rate of 62%."

These figures come as net immigration averaged 0.9% of the US population for the past two years, surpassing estimates of 0.3%. 

But while higher immigration flows should keep labor momentum going through this year, Fitch also cautioned that it risks an oversupply. 

That's as weakness is starting to show in labor demand. According to Wall Street analysts, that includes rising layoff announcements, lack of full-time job opportunities, and a plunge in business hirings.

Still, migrants' contribution to labor has significantly boosted economic growth, Fitch said, a point shared by previous research.

For instance, Goldman Sachs lifted its 2024 GDP outlook due to this labor surge, while JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley highlighted immigration's positive impacts on US output.

In a separate report published Thursday, Fitch also named a secondary source fueling the impressive labor market: government hiring.

Job growth in this sector averaged 2.7% on an annual basis in 2023, the highest year-over-year rate since 1990, the ratings firm reported. It's unlikely to slow for now, as government employment is still lagging behind the private sector.

"The post-pandemic recovery for government payroll did not begin until much later in 2021 because most government educational institutions maintained a remote only system with minimal staff throughout 2020," Olu Sonola said in the report, head of U.S. economic research.

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• The US economy may have already stuck the soft landing, according to Evercore founder Roger Altman.
• The investing veteran pointed to resilient growth, which has crushed expectations over the last year.
• It's the big reason the stock market remains strong, despite concerns over Fed rate cuts, Altman said.

The US economy may have successfully avoided a recession and is already gliding toward a soft landing, according to Evercore founder Roger Altman.

The investment banking chief pointed to rising fear of an economic downturn, especially as interest rates in the economy look poised to remain higher for longer.

But the US economy has been "amazing" in its resilience, Altman told CNBC on Thursday. Growth has surpassed economists' expectations, with real GDP expected to have surged 2.4% over the first quarter, according to the Atlanta Fed. 

The job market also looks to be on rock-solid footing despite firms battling tighter financial conditions. The unemployment rate was at a record low of 3.8% in March—around a full percentage point lower than what the Fed previously predicted, Altman said. Labor productivity also remains strong, rising 2.6% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Those are big reasons stocks remain buoyant despite a sell-off this week as markets repriced expectations for Fed rate cuts. Inflation came in hotter than expected for the third month in a row in March, which led most investors to take the prospect of a June rate cut off the table. 

"Everything by and large is going right in the US economy," Altman said, noting that inflation is usually sticky as it falls from a peak. "The economy is outpacing every single forecast one could have put up from six months ago or nine months ago. Arguably, the soft landing already has happened."

Some Wall Street bears have warned a recession still looms for the US economy, with signs of weakness beginning to surface in the job market. According to top economist David Rosenberg, 22 US states have met the criteria for the Sahm Rule, a notoriously accurate recession indicator that's triggered when the three-month moving average of the unemployment rate rises 50 basis points above its 12-month low. 

The New York Fed is pricing in a 58% chance the US could tip into recession by March of next year. Most experts also saw a recession as unlikely at the start of the year, with 91% of economists assigning a less-than-50% chance of a recession in January, according to the National Association for Business Economics' latest survey. 

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• Leaders from JPMorgan, Microsoft, and Apple attended a White House state dinner on Wednesday.
• The dinner was hosted by Biden for the Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida.
• Take a look at the business leaders and tech moguls who attended the lavish event.

On Wednesday top business and tech figures mingled with celebrities and lawmakers at the White House for a state dinner hosted by President Joe Biden.

The event was in honor of the prime minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida. It was a celebration of the relationship between the countries, as the leaders reaffirmed military and economic partnerships alongside new technology initiatives to strengthen cybersecurity and AI.

CEOs and founders, including Jamie Dimon, Tim Cook, and Jeff Bezos, attended the lavish event. The guest list also included BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, and his wife, Judy Dimon

Earlier this week, Jamie Dimon released his annual shareholder letter which outlined some of the biggest problems facing JPMorgan Chase and the world. He touched on topics from AI to geopolitics and called for the US to bring the West together during times of global turbulence.

Apple CEO Tim Cook took a seat at the table

Tim Cook was among several tech moguls who attended the event, which had a cherry blossom theme. Cook also attended last year's White House state dinner honoring the prime minister of India Narendra Modi, alongside guests like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Lisa Jackson, another key Apple figure, joined Cook

Lisa Jackson, vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives at Apple, is no stranger to the White House. She served as administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency under President Barack Obama.

Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez were in attendance

The former Amazon CEO was invited to the event alongside his fiancée Lauren Sánchez, a former news anchor. Their relationship became public in 2019, following Bezos' split from MacKenzie Scott.

Microsoft president Brad Smith secured an invite

Earlier this week, it was revealed that Microsoft plans to invest $2.9 billion in AI data centers in Japan by 2025.

President and COO of Blackstone, Jon Gray, and his wife Mindy, cofounder of the Gray Foundation

Gray has worked at the private equity giant Blackstone since he was 22 years old and rose to prominence in the company's real estate investment group, before taking on the role of president and COO under Stephen Schwarzman.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell also got in on the action

Jerome Powell was appointed to his role as Fed chair by former President Trump and then reappointed by Biden. He has repeatedly emphasized the importance of the central bank staying above the political fray when it comes to decision-making on monetary policy.

President Biden hosted the event in honor of the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida

The grand event was designed recognize to the "flourishing" friendship between Japan and the US, First Lady Jill Biden said at a media preview of the event on Tuesday.

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• The latest attempt to dethrone the smartphone arrived this week.
• Humane, a startup founded in 2018, released an AI pin that aims to offer an alternative.
• Reviews suggest it's far from a smartphone-killer, however.

Silicon Valley is having a hard time figuring out what a post-smartphone future might look like.

Ever since Steve Jobs introduced the world to the iPhone almost two decades ago, back in 2007, no product has come close to having a stranglehold on people's attention quite the way the pocketable device has.

Sales for smartphones continue to grow, as data from Counterpoint Research shows: shipments rose 7% year on year in the fourth quarter of 2023 to 323.2 million units, showing appetite remains strong for devices that people operate their lives with.

But for all their advantages, there has been some incentive to figure out life beyond smartphones.

Not only has their development stagnated with each new release, but the impact they can have on people's sleep, the risk posed to children's mental health from excessive use, and the ease with which users rack up screen time raise valid concerns.

It's why companies have made plenty of attempts to offer an alternative.

Google tried to make $1,500 smart glasses a thing in the 2010s but miserably failed. Meta is trying to offer a more refined take with its Ray-Ban partnership. And now, in the AI era, a newer company is trying to make wearable pins the future.

Unfortunately, this looks like a dead-end on the road toward a post-smartphone future too.

Humane, a startup founded in 2018 by husband and wife duo Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno — both former managers at Apple — has been busy working on an AI-enabled wearable pin that offers smartphone capabilities while doing away with unending screentime.

As Humane puts it, "whether you're making calls, sending messages, seeking answers, capturing moments, taking notes, or managing your digital world," its pin should have you sorted.

But after reviews of the first-gen version of its AI pin dropped this week, it's clear smartphone users will continue to be glued to their screens for a while.

The pin, launched in the US for $699 and deemed the start of "ambient computing" by its founders, was described by The Verge as "an interesting idea that is so thoroughly unfinished and so totally broken in so many unacceptable ways" that it's tough to recommend.

In its review of the pin, a device that requires a $24 monthly subscription to work, the publication acknowledged it looked pretty neat but was unsparing about almost everything else: it lacks basic functions like an alarm, struggled to make calls half the time, music streaming falters.

Others had trouble uploading high-resolution images they took with the pin to Humane's cloud storage service, and the AI meant to make the pin feel like a "second brain" felt "brain-dead half the time." Overheating also appeared to be an issue for many reviewers.

For Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a veteran reporter who has covered Apple and the smartphone market for years, the verdict appears that "the phone will stick around far longer than some expected."

Humane's Bongiorno seems to have conceded this too. Responding to Gurman on X, she said "the smartphone is not going anywhere for a bit," as "no computer replaces the one before it."

Even Apple, which entered a new hardware market this year with the launch of its $3,500 Vision Pro, is positioning its mixed-reality headset as a product to work in tandem with iPhones for Apple devotees.

Don't expect your pockets to become lighter anytime soon.

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• Hatsune Miku, the vocaloid singer, kicked off her new tour on a giant LED screen.
• Some fans are fuming, 404 Media reports, given she's appeared as a hologram in the past.
• Miku is set to grace the Coachella stage this weekend.

Virtual popstar Hatsune Miku had the nerve to appear in 2D — not 3D — while kicking off her latest North American tour. And some fans on social media are fuming.

On the first two stops of her Miku Expo 2024 North America outing — in Vancouver and Portland — the turquoise-pigtailed starlet did not appear as a hologram as she has in the past, 404 Media reports, but instead via a big LED screen accented by decorations and a light show.

The same setup appeared to be employed at Miku's Monday show in San Jose.

On X and TikTok, the #MikuExpo2024 hashtag surfaced mixed reviews, according to 404 Media. Some cheered the energy and community of the show, while others were underwhelmed by the screen in light of what they paid to attend.

"I'm sorry, but there is absolutely no excuse for that LED Wall at #MIKUEXPO2024," one X user wrote. "Especially with how much more expensive the tickets were this year. It's a damn shame."

"I'd want my money back," one TikToker concurred. "Where are the holograms?"

A spokesperson for Miku's creator, Crypton Future Media, told Business Insider that the LED screen technology will continue to be featured at shows across North America and Europe.

"We appreciate the fan feedback regarding Miku Expo's North America tour and will continue to refine our show experience with our audience in mind," the spokesperson said.

Hatsune Miku, which translates to "the first sound from the future," is a Vocaloid — or software that allows fans to compose their own songs using Miku's voice, which she then performs live. Miku was initially released almost two decades ago and even opened for Lady Gaga in 2014.

Tickets for the next available show in Phoenix Sunday start at $55.

Miku is also set to perform at Coachella this weekend. The star was initially slated to appear in 2020, but the event was scrapped due to the pandemic.

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• This post originally appeared in the Insider Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.

Happy Friday! Tax day is Monday, but don't sweat it. Here's a rundown on how to file for an extension. We've also got resources on how to do your taxes.

By the way, we're wrapping up voting for the championship matchup in our business, tech, and innovation bracket. You can vote here.

In today's big story, we're looking at Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's letter to shareholders, which details the tech giant's plan in the age of generative AI.

What's on deck:

• Markets: These 11 startups are IPO-ready.

• Tech: The reviews are in for a hot new wearable AI device, but don't get excited.

• Business: Big corporations are gobbling up medical practices.

But first, Amazon, AI, and a letter.

If this was forwarded to you, sign up here.

The big story

Amazon in the AI age

The generative AI revolution is coming, and Amazon wants in on the ground floor.

Andy Jassy, Amazon's CEO, identified the tech as the company's next big focus in his annual letter to shareholders, writes Business Insider's Ana Altchek.

Jassy described gen AI as Amazon's "next set of primitives," which is corporate jargon for saying Amazon wants companies getting into gen AI to build stuff using their tools.

It's a strategy that's worked well for Amazon in the past. AWS, Amazon's public cloud business that Jassy helped create, has been incredibly profitable and upended how companies think about their tech strategy.

But there's a new kid on the block. The AI cloud includes Nvidia's GPUs and large-language models, which power the AI services and tools that are all the rage now. Meanwhile, the cloud 1.0 business, which AWS has long dominated, is no longer cool.

Jassy's letter details how Amazon plans to reposition itself at the forefront of this new era.

The three-layer approach includes Amazon powering companies that build and train models (Anthropic, Snap), helping companies use these models with their data (Bridgewater Associates, Pfizer), and creating customer-facing AI applications themselves.

It wasn't all AI talk in Jassy's letter.

I asked our resident Amazon expert, Eugene Kim, about what stood out to him beyond the mentions of AI. He highlighted two points:

A lower cost to serve. Jassy emphasized the company would continue to find cheaper ways to deliver items faster. That's a nod to the threat Amazon feels from fast-fashion retailer Shein. It also enables Amazon to increase its market share among customers looking for cheap, daily items that might have previously been costly for Amazon to ship.

Prime Video gets some love. Amazon's streaming business has been on a rocky road recently, with layoffs hitting the unit earlier this year. But Jassy's hopes remain high. He said in the letter he believes Prime Video could "be a large and profitable business on its own."

Exclusive content on the streamer has been a mixed bag. Its latest big bet is "Fallout," an adaptation of the popular video game set in a post-apocalyptic world. (Hmmm, what a novel concept.) Meanwhile, Prime Video's pursuit of sports remains a question mark.

3 things in markets

1. These companies will be first in line when the IPO market finally opens up. With the help of Pitchbook data, BI identified 11 startups ready to go public this year. Among those ready for an exit: Databricks, Epic Games, and Zocdoc. Here's who else made the list.

2. Junior bankers could be the latest casualty of AI. The New York Times reported banks are considering pulling back on hiring new analysts thanks to AI handling a chunk of their workload. But it's not all bad news on the Street, as Morgan Stanley is betting AI can free up advisors' time to be "more human."

3. The best-case scenario for interest rate cuts is up in smoke. Wall Street strategists are readjusting expectations for when the Fed will lower rates. Expert predictions include only one cut this year and even a rate hike.

3 things in tech

1. Adam Neumann opens up about Flow, his secretive billion-dollar startup. Neumann wants to turn apartment living into a utopian fantasy. But despite having been in the works for more than a year, little is known about Flow. In an exclusive interview, Neumann spoke to BI about his newest venture.

2. Humane's AI Pin reviews are decidedly mixed. The pin, which came out yesterday, aspires to one day replace our smartphones. But early users said it's not worth the $699 price tag, and just isn't that good yet.

3. Meet adtech's rising stars. Digital advertising is facing a wave of new challenges, like the death of third-party cookies. BI identified 33 up-and-coming professionals who are finding solutions and developing new products.

3 things in business

1. Bon Appétit plans to cut about 25% of its union staff. In 2020, many of the brand's best-known staff left amid a racial reckoning. Now, insiders are worried planned layoffs will undermine the work the outlet has done to get back on track.

2. Hiring managers share résumé clichés to avoid. Don't just list your responsibilities — instead, highlight the impact you've had at work. And don't use too many buzzwords, like saying that you're "detail-oriented."

3. Big corporations are quietly taking over your medical practice. Businesses like hospital systems, insurers, and PE firms are gobbling up medical clinics, and some doctors and industry experts say it's ruining healthcare.

In other news

• Short-seller sends Globe Life shares plunging 53% as insurance giant calls report 'defamatory,' threatens legal action.

• O.J. Simpson dead at 76, family announces.

• 277,000 student-loan borrowers who have 'paid what they can afford' for at least a decade are getting $7.4 billion in debt wiped out.

• Some Amazon employees are complaining about projected pay cuts, internal messages show.

• Trump is now out of options to delay Monday's start of jury selection in his hush money trial: legal experts.

• O.J. Simpson's TV moment is never going to be replicated.

• It looks like In-N-Out Burger really won't come to the East Coast any time soon.

• 3 top personal trainers explain why they stopped taking pre-workout supplements that boost energy.

• Mark Cuban says there is one thing that he wishes Americans understood better about the economy in an election year.

• 3 takeaways from new data on how much money creators are making in 2024, including why affiliate marketing is having a 'glow up.'

• Soccer's biggest league is rolling out AI-powered tech to make crucial calls.

• More CEOs expect hybrid work is here to stay.

What's happening today

• Today's earnings: JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and other companies are reporting.

• Coachella starts today.

The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Jordan Parker Erb, editor, in New York. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. George Glover, reporter, in London.

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• The Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, but the wreck was not found until September 1, 1985.
• The story of the ship, its passengers, and life onboard still fascinates us today.
• One of the ship's musicians wasn't officially declared dead until 2000.

The sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912, has captivated people for 112 years. The stories of survivors, the various explanations as to why it sank, the decades-long search to find the wreck, and the multi-billion-dollar film released in 1997 have all contributed to its enduring place in pop culture.

On September 1, 1985, more than seven decades after the Titanic sank, its wreckage was found during a secret US Navy mission searching for two other missing vessels.

As technology advanced, companies started offering tourists the chance to dive 2.4 miles below the surface and see the wreck for themselves. In June 2023, a submersible, the Titan, with five people aboard, went missing two hours into its journey to the wreckage. The Coast Guard later confirmed the Titan had imploded, killing all five.

Keep scrolling to learn more about the Titanic, including how it was found, what it was like on board, and what secrets we've learned from the wreckage.

Actress Dorothy Gibson, who was aboard the Titanic and survived, starred in a film called "Saved From the Titanic," which was released just one month after the ship sank.

American silent film actress Dorothy Gibson was one of the approximately 700 survivors of the tragedy.

Upon arriving in New York City unscathed, she immediately began filming "Saved From the Titanic," the first film to depict the events of the sinking.

According to the Los Angeles Times, it was released in May 1912, a month after the crash. She is famous for wearing the same clothes and shoes in the movie as she had worn during the actual sinking, according to Atlas Obscura.

While the film was successful, it exists only in memories now, much like one Jack Dawson. The only known print of the film was destroyed in a fire, reported IB Times.

A popular urban legend is that another survivor, Lawrence Beesley, tried to crash the filming of the 1958 film "A Night to Remember" because he wanted to symbolically go down with the ship.

According to IMDb's trivia page, Beesley was on the set of "A Night to Remember," which is considered the most accurate of all Titanic films, at least according to the BBC.

He reportedly tried to jump into the scene depicting the ship's sinking, in order to symbolically go down with the ship. Legend has it that director Roy Ward Baker refused, as it would have been a union violation and could have halted filming.

Beesley was a survivor from the second class, and he wrote a memoir about his experience entitled "The Loss of the SS Titanic."

The 700 third-class passengers had to share two bathtubs.

Even though, by all accounts, the third-class accommodations on the Titanic were much better than those on an average ship, they were still pretty rough.

The total number of third-class passengers was at least 709, according to Encyclopedia Titanica, and they all had to share two bathtubs, reported ABC News.

One of the ship's musicians wasn't officially declared dead until 2000.

Roger Bricoux, the Titanic's cello player, was just 21 years old when he perished during the ship's sinking.

But Bricoux wasn't officially declared dead until 2000, though all of the musicians died on April 15, 1912. The French army even called him a deserter when he failed to show up to serve in World War I, according to his profile on Encyclopedia Titanica.

The Association Française du Titanic (French Association of the Titanic) worked to clear his name and officially put Bricoux to rest, but it didn't succeed until 88 years after the Titanic sank.

The ship's band played music right until the very end to try to calm passengers, just like in the 1997 movie.

They have been called heroes, and they played music for more than two hours after hitting the iceberg, the BBC reported.

The ship's lookouts had to rely on their eyesight alone — the ship's binoculars were locked inside a cabinet that no one could find the key to.

According to The Telegraph, the ship's lookouts, Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee, didn't have access to binoculars during the journey and therefore couldn't see very far.

The ship's second officer was replaced at the last minute and forgot to hand off the key to the locker that housed the ship's binoculars.

The key resurfaced at auction in 2007, where it was sold for over $90,000, reported Scottish newspaper The Herald.

One theory is that the crew didn't spot the iceberg in time because they didn't have access to said binoculars.

According to the official 1912 inquiry findings, The Telegraph reported, only 37 seconds elapsed between actually seeing the iceberg, calling downstairs, and deciding what course of action to take.

At the memorial of Frederick Fleet, one of the lookouts, a prankster left a pair of binoculars with a note reading, "Sorry for bringing these 100 years too late."

Fleet was the lookout who called out the now-famous words, "Iceberg, right ahead." He survived the sinking but tragically went on to take his own life in 1965, after the death of his wife, according to his Encyclopedia Titanica profile.

On the centennial anniversary of the Titanic's sinking, a prankster removed a memorial wreath from his gravestone and replaced it with a pair of binoculars and a note apologizing for the lateness of the binoculars, reported The Daily Mail.

The Titanic was plagued by tragedy from the start. Eight people died during the ship's construction.

According to National Geographic, eight men died during the construction of the ship, but only five of their names are known: Samuel Scott, John Kelly, William Clarke, James Dobbin, and Robert Murphy. A plaque memorializing the eight men in Belfast was unveiled in 2012.

The richest man aboard was John Jacob Astor IV, who was widely believed to have been the richest man in the world at the time of his death.

Astor was not just the richest man on the Titanic but widely believed to be the richest man in the world at the time of his death. He was worth an estimated $150 million, or $4.5 billion in today's dollars, according to CNBC.

According to Biography, Astor was on the ship returning home from a months-long honeymoon with his new wife, Madeleine Talmage Force, who, at 18 years old, was 28 years younger than him.

The extended honeymoon was actually a way to escape society's gossip — Astor had just been divorced within two years of his new marriage, which was relatively unheard of back then, Mental Floss reported.

Astor's body was one of the few that was recovered in the Atlantic Ocean after the ship went down, The New York Times reported at the time.

Multiple newspapers mistakenly reported that the crash caused no fatalities, including the Daily Mail, the Belfast Telegraph, and The World.

In the race to publish a headline about the disaster, numerous newspapers gave families and loved ones false hope about the sinking of the Titanic. As a Library of Virginia project showed, The Daily Mail declared "no lives lost" while the Reno Evening Gazette said that "passengers are safe."

The Belfast Telegraph claimed "no danger of loss of life."

Some American newspapers were able to take advantage of the time difference, making their headlines more accurate. The New York Times, for example, ran the headline "Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg; 866 Rescued by Carpathia, Probably 1,250 Perish; Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Noted Names Missing."

A woman who survived the Titanic's sinking later survived the sinking of another ship: the Britannic.

Depending on how you look at it, stewardess and nurse Violet Jessop is the luckiest — or unluckiest — woman alive. She survived the sinking of both the Titanic and the Britannic.

Jessop was just 25 when she survived the sinking of the Titanic. She was instructed to get into a lifeboat while the ship was going down to show women that the boats were safe.

Undeterred by this maritime tragedy, Jessop began working on the Britannic, according to the Belfast Telegraph (dubbed the Titanic 2 by the media), until it came across a mine that had been planted by a German U-boat in 1916.

That ship also sank, and Jessop escaped again, but this time with a serious head injury that would affect her for the rest of her life.

It is rumored that a few men dressed up as women to get a spot on a lifeboat.

For one couple, these rumors even caused divorce.

Dickinson and Helen Bishop were granted a divorce in 1916, four years after the Titanic went down. Helen claimed that her husband was cruel and a drunk, according to M Live, but their relationship was also plagued by rumors that Dickinson had dressed up as a woman in order to escape the ship.

These claims were explained further in the 2012 book "Shadow of the Titanic: The Extraordinary Stories of Those Who Survived."

In his official testimony during the US Senate Inquiry regarding the Titanic, Dickinson claimed that there had been no official order allowing only women and children to get on lifeboats, according to the Titanic Inquiry Project.

Bishop's not the only man to have been accused of disguising himself as a woman — J. Bruce Ismay, William Carter, and William T. Sloper were all dogged by the same rumors throughout their lives, according to fact-checking site Snopes.

Every single engineer aboard the Titanic perished — they all stayed behind to keep the ship's power running until the very end.

The Titanic's lights only went out when she finally went under, due to the tireless efforts of the ship's engineers, who stayed behind to keep the electricity and pumps running while the ship sank. They also kept the radio running, which put out distress signals until minutes before the ship sank, according to The Guardian.

Not one of the 35 engineers survived.

No city was more affected by the Titanic's sinking than Southampton, England, where the ship had departed from. In one school, half of the students lost their fathers.

According to the Daily Echo, at "one Northam school, 120 of the 240 pupils lost their father" — Northam is a neighborhood in Southampton. Most of the crew was from the city, and only 213 crewmembers survived, while 686 died.

The Daily Echo also reported that one widow, who had just given birth to twins, found out her husband had died and died of shock herself.

The Navratil brothers were known as the "Titanic orphans." They were the only two children from the ship to be rescued without a parent or guardian.

The Navratil brothers Edmond and Michel were just 2 and 4 years old, respectively, when the Titanic sank. They were with their father, Michel Sr., who had kidnapped them.

Separated from their mother, he decided to take them to America in the hopes that his estranged wife would follow, and that they could start a new life in the New World, according to NPR.

Their father put them on a lifeboat, and he was never seen again.

The two spoke no English, so they were taken in by a French-speaking survivor, Margaret Hays, until the authorities could locate their mother. She found them a month after the disaster, thanks to their faces being plastered on newspapers the world over.

One of the most beloved quotes from the 1997 film is based on a true story.

In the movie, Benjamin Guggenheim refuses a life vest and states, "We are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down as gentlemen."

While it seems almost too cinematic to be true, the real Benjamin Guggenheim actually was prepared to go down like a gentleman, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

A New York Times article published in April 1912 that was reprinted by Encyclopedia Titanica reported that he had asked a steward to tell his wife in New York City, "I've done my best in doing my duty." He went down with the ship.

Watch the scene based on Guggenheim's final moments here.

There were at least 13 couples celebrating their honeymoon on the Titanic.

According to the 2011 book "Titanic Love Stories," there were at least 13 couples celebrating their honeymoons on the ship.

A novella called "Futility" which was published 14 years before the Titanic set sail seemed to have predicted the disaster.

"Futility," a novella written by American author Morgan Robertson, was published in 1898, 14 years before the Titanic set sail. It was centered on the sinking of a fictional ship called the Titan.

There's an eerie number of similarities between the ship's sinking in "Futility" and the Titanic in real life.

First, the ship names are just two letters off (Titan vs Titanic). They were also said to be almost the same size, and both sank in April, due to an iceberg. Both ships had been described as unsinkable, and, sadly, both had just over the legally required amount of lifeboats, which were nowhere near enough.

The author was accused of being a psychic, but he explained that the uncanny similarities were simply a product of his extensive knowledge, saying, "I know what I'm writing about, that's all."

The SS Californian is known for having been near the Titanic when it sank, but not coming to its aid until it was too late. Three years after the Titanic, the Californian sank too.

As the BBC reported, multiple bad judgment calls led to the Californian not helping the Titanic: The ship's radio was allegedly shut off for the night when the Titanic hit the iceberg, and when the captain was awakened by the flares the Titanic had been setting off, he assumed that they were just fireworks.

By the time the SOS messages finally came through, it was too late.

However, the Californian wasn't long for this world either — it sank in November 1915, torpedoed by a German submarine during World War I, according to the book "British Merchant Ships Sunk by U-boats in World War One," published in 2006.

Only one woman actually went down with the ship and survived, Rhoda Mary Abott.

Abott was on the deck until the very end with her two sons, and all three went into the water with the ship.

Tragically, her two sons were washed away by the ocean, but Abott was eventually pulled into a lifeboat that was rescued by the Carpathia, according to the 2012 guide "The Titanic For Dummies."

One of the ship's cooks, Charles Joughin, was able to survive much longer in the cold water than others because of the copious amounts of whiskey he had drank.

Joughin is briefly but memorably portrayed in "Titanic" as chugging a flask of alcohol before entering the water. This is based on reality — according to reports, Joughin grabbed two bottles of whiskey as the ship went down, as written in the 2015 book "Fascinating Footnotes From History."

According to the Titanic Inquiry Project, Joughin reported that he survived in the frigid North Atlantic for at least two hours.

Joughin had had a busy night. The last dinner served on the Titanic (to first-class passengers) was a whopping 10 courses.

According to NPR, the menu included "oysters, filet mignon, poached salmon, chicken Lyonnaise, foie gras, roasted pigeon, lamb with mint sauce, and Punch Romaine, a palate-cleansing ice flavored with oranges and drenched in Champagne."

And that's just for first class — the ship's cooks had to prepare food for second- and third-class passengers, plus the crew, too.

The 1997 movie ended up costing more to produce than it cost to build the Titanic, which was the largest and most luxurious ship at the time, even when adjusted for inflation.

The Titanic was estimated to have cost around $7.5 million in 1912, reported the History Channel, which, according to the US Department of Labor's inflation calculator, would be around $231 million.

The 1997 blockbuster's budget was $200 million, or around $376 million today, according to the Los Angeles Times.

And though it was the biggest ship in the world at the time, it still took 73 years to find its wreckage. It was discovered in the midst of a secret Cold War Navy mission.

The Titanic's wreckage was discovered in 1985, during a secret Cold War Navy mission to locate two sunken nuclear submarines, which explorer Robert Ballard revealed to National Geographic over two decades later.

"The Navy never expected me to find the Titanic, and so when that happened, they got really nervous because of the publicity," Ballard said. "But people were so focused on the legend of the Titanic they never connected the dots."

When the wreck was found, it finally confirmed reports that the ship had, in fact, broken in two. This was a long-disputed issue.

There were at least 15 witnesses who swore on the record that they had seen the Titanic break into two pieces before completely sinking beneath the waves. But they were ignored — the official US inquiry stated that the ship sank intact, as the New York Daily News reported.

How the Titanic sank was disputed for 73 years until it was finally found on the ocean floor, broken in two.

The whole wreck could be gone by 2030.

According to ABC News, UNESCO and scientists think the whole wreck could vanish by 2030, thanks to bacteria eating away at it.

During one of the expeditions to view the wreckage, a bowler hat was discovered inside a passenger's closet, right where he left it.

James Cameron, director/writer/producer/editor of "Titanic," wrote about his experiences touring the ship's wreckage for National Geographic. He shared that "in Henry Harper's D Deck cabin, his bowler hat remains in the ruins of his closet, right where he left it."

 

While many people believed the Titanic was unsinkable, not everyone did. A passenger, Charles Melville Hays, predicted an "appalling disaster." He perished in the water.

According to his entry in Encyclopedia Titanica, Hays was president of the Grand Trunk and Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Companies, which would later become the Canadian National Railway, and was thus well-versed in the technological advancements in transportation.

Survivor Colonel Archibald Gracie Hays pondered if continuing to build bigger and faster ships was wise, according to a reprinted article from the Toronto Daily Star that was reprinted in Encyclopedia Titanica.

According to Gracie, Hays said "the White Star, the Cunard, and Hamburg-American Lines are devoting their attention and ingenuity in vying with one another to attain the supremacy in luxurious ships and in making speed records. The time will come soon when this will be checked by some appalling disaster."

And an appalling disaster it was. Over 1,500 people died — though only four of those were women from the first class.

According to Encyclopedia Titanica, just four women from first class died during the disaster.

One of those four women was Ann Elizabeth Isham, who perished because she refused to leave her dog behind.

Isham reportedly jumped out of a lifeboat once she realized that she couldn't take her Great Dane with her, according to PETA.

It's been speculated that a woman found in the water with her arms wrapped around her large dog was Isham, though it's impossible to know for sure.

Of the 1,500-plus who perished, only 300 bodies were recovered. One was called the "Unknown Child" and wasn't identified until almost 100 years later.

A child's body was recovered from the water five days after the Titanic went down. Rescuers were so moved by the little boy that they buried him in a grave in Nova Scotia memorializing the 53 children that died.

The body was misidentified three times before he was finally identified as Sidney Goodwin when his shoes were donated to a museum and DNA tested, the Toronto Star reported.

Goodwin's tomb, marked with a headstone that says "unknown child," has remained untouched. His family stated, "The tombstone of the unknown child represents all of the children who perished on the Titanic, and we left it that way," reported LiveScience.

The last remaining survivor passed away in 2009 — she was just 2 months old when the ship sank.

Millvina Dean was just 2 months old when she was wrapped in a sack and lowered into a lifeboat. She was the last living survivor of the Titanic and died in 2009, at age 97.

One of the most famous survivors was the "Unsinkable" Molly Brown. She later ran for US Senate.

After the sinking of the Titanic, Brown became a full-fledged activist, according to Biography. She was a vocal supporter of the suffrage movement, worked with the Red Cross during World War I, and even ran for Senate, though she didn't win.

Of the about 700 survivors, only one was Japanese. When he returned home, he was ridiculed and ostracized for not going down with the ship.

Masabumi Hosono was originally called the "Lucky Japanese Boy" by American media, but he was soon labeled a coward for getting on a lifeboat, which many considered primarily for women and children, reported AV Club.

He was called dishonorable in his home country and was accused of dressing up as a woman in order to gain access to a boat (there's no proof of this).

After "Titanic" was released in 1997, Hosono's family published a letter he had written to his wife describing the sinking of the ship — explaining he had been ready to die until a crew member called out for two more people, and he hopped in with another man. 

A lifeboat drill that was supposed to take place the day of the sinking was canceled by the ship's captain.

According to a survivor's testimony, it was completely out of the ordinary for a Sunday to pass without a lifeboat drill, the Toronto Star reported. April 14, 1912, was the last Sunday the Titanic would ever see, and the day of the sinking (technically, the Titanic sank on April 15 at 2 a.m.).

It's unclear why the drill never happened.

While it's impossible to know for sure, a ship spotted this iceberg with a streak of red paint going along its side soon after the crash. This is believed to be the iceberg that sank the ship.

This photo was taken on April 15, 1912, the morning after the Titanic crashed, from a ship called the SS Prinz Adalbert.

The photographer hadn't even heard about the Titanic sinking yet, he just noticed that it appeared to show signs of collision, including a streak of red paint, according to Wired.

The hangar used to build the Titanic is now a filming location — HBO's hit show "Game of Thrones" shot there.

Part of Titanic Studios incorporates Paint Hall, where construction on the Titanic took place. It was first used in 2007 for the filming of "City of Ember," and it has been part of multiple TV shows and movies since then, including "Game of Thrones," according to Variety.

The ship's profile, which features four smokestacks, makes it one of the most recognizable ships in history. But the fourth smokestack served no purpose, other than aesthetics.

The Titanic had four smokestacks (or funnels), but only three actually carried smoke from the furnaces. You can see how no smoke is coming out of the fourth one.

A lucky few bought tickets but never boarded the ship, such as Milton Hershey, J.P. Morgan, and Guglielmo Marconi.

Days after the ship went down, newspapers began compiling lists of people who had bought tickets but never boarded the Titanic — they called them the "Just Missed It Club."

Those who narrowly escaped disaster included Milton Hershey, who decided to take an earlier ship home with his wife; J. Pierpont Morgan (founder of General Electric and US Steel), who ended up staying at a French spa; and Guglielmo Marconi (an inventor), who also caught an earlier ship.

The ship was reportedly carrying 15,000 bottles of beer, 1,000 bottles of wine, 850 bottles of liquor, and 8,000 cigars.

In addition to all that alcohol and tobacco, there were 75,000 pounds of fresh meat, 7,500 pounds of bacon, 36,000 oranges, 1,000 loaves of bread, and 40,000 fresh eggs on board, according to Titanic Facts.

James Cameron's "Titanic" isn't the only movie about the ship. A Nazi propaganda film was shot depicting the events from a German perspective.

The Nazi re-telling of the sinking of the Titanic attempted to blame the British for the sinking of the Titanic by pushing the ship to continue at full speed, despite the warnings of a (fictional) German First Officer who ostensibly was the only person aboard who cared about human life.

The behind-the-scenes scandal of this movie is almost unbelievable, according to the New York Post. Before being murdered in prison for speaking against the Nazi regime, the director demanded a full-size ocean liner that he could film on, and the Nazis provided the SS Cap Arcona (their version of a luxury ocean liner).

Tragically, the Cap Arcona ended up being used as a floating concentration camp and sank, resulting in somewhere between 4,500 and 7,000 casualties, according to The Washington Post.

Captain Edward Smith really did go down with the ship, though it's unclear what his final moments were actually like.

Smith, who had been a captain for 40 years, was preparing to retire after his final journey on the Titanic. Unfortunately, he'd never get to retire, as he died aboard the ship. As History notes, no one knows for sure what happened to Smith, but there are many rumors regarding his death.

"Captain Smith had at least five different deaths, from heroic to ignominious," wrote Wyn Craig Wade in "The Titanic: End of a Dream." Some said he jumped off the ship with a baby, dove off himself, was washed away by a wave, or even shot himself (though historians widely discredit this theory).

Stranger still, some people claimed that he survived and that they'd seen him, but these sightings have been discounted.

Mysteries are still being solved to this day. Six Chinese passengers survived the sinking but were unable to get off the Carpathia and enter the US. Instead, they were sent to Cuba and seemingly vanished — until recently.

A documentary about the six missing Chinese survivors (Lee Bing, Fang Lang, Chang Chip, Ah Lam, Chung Foo, and Ling Hee) called "The Six" premiered at film festivals in 2021.

"Six of the survivors, all Chinese sailors, had to stay on the ship, prohibited from entering the United States under an anti-immigration law called the Chinese Exclusion Act. The next day, immigration officials escorted them across Manhattan and put them on board a Cuba-bound cargo ship they had been contracted to work on. And then they seemingly vanished," The New York Times reported in August 2021.

One of these men, Lang, even inspired a scene in James Cameron's "Titanic" — he was rescued from the water by the single returning lifeboat, much like Kate Winslet's Rose. His rescue was also depicted, but the scene, which is available to watch on YouTube, was later deleted.

The BBC reported that the six survivors eventually returned to the UK. Chip died soon after the sinking in 1914. Lam was deported to Hong Kong, Hee made his way to India, Bing moved to Canada, and Lang eventually became a US citizen decades after he was rejected. It's unclear what happened to Foo.

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• United Airlines flight attendants picketed outside LaGuardia, Austin, Guam, and London airports.
• They've been negotiating for a new contract for 29 months, Skift reported.
• CEO Scott Kirby's pay almost doubled to $18.5 million last year.

United Airlines flight attendants were picketing outside 17 airports around the world on Thursday in a protest about pay, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA said.

Announcing the strike, the union said the carrier's CEO, Scott Kirby, saw his pay rise by around 90% in 2023.

According to a proxy statement filed by the company earlier this month, Kirby was paid $18.5 million last year, compared to $9.8 million the year before.

Much of the increase was due to him receiving $6.6 million in cash based on an incentive program, in addition to a salary of over $1 million, $10.7 million in stock awards, and $155,740 in "other compensation," the proxy statement said.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average flight attendant made $70,000 in 2023.

"If the airline has money to award execs with massive compensation increases, we expect to receive the same," Ken Diaz, the AFA United president, said in a press release.

"United flight attendants are the lifeblood of this airline, and management needs to come to the table now with an offer that reflects our critical contribution," he added.

The AFA said contract negotiations have been going on for over two years.

Skift reported about a dozen flight attendants were picketing outside New York's LaGuardia Airport on Thursday.

There were also picket lines in Austin, Cleveland, Chicago, San Diego, Guam, and the UK.

"Since last month, we've been meeting with the Association of Flight Attendants and the federal mediator they requested as we continue to work toward an industry-leading agreement for our flight attendants," United told Business Insider in a statement.

"Our negotiations are continuing this week and we have additional dates scheduled later this month," they added.

Last July, United reached a deal with pilots for pay increases of up to 40% over the life of the contract.

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• Russian attacks have knocked out a major power plant near Kyiv. 
• The Ukrainian capital was once shielded from Russian attacks. 
• But it's running desperately short of air defense missiles. 

Russia has taken out a major power plant near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in a sign that even the country's best-protected cities are increasingly vulnerable to Russian attacks.

The Trypillya power plant, which is around 30 miles south of Kyiv and is the region's major power plant, was destroyed Thursday by Russian drone and missile attacks.

"The scale of destruction is terrifying," Centrenergo chairman Andriy Hota told the BBC. He said that the attacks destroyed "the transformer, the turbines, the generators. They destroyed 100%."

Ukraine's air force said it was part of a wave of 80 missile attacks on Thursday on Ukraine's cities and infrastructure — and it only managed to shoot down around 30% of them.

Notably, it said that all of Russia's Kinzhal missiles, which air defenses had previously managed to down, evaded interception in the attack.

It's a much lower success rate than Ukraine had in stopping Russian airborne attacks last May when it was shooting down around 90% of Russian missiles and drones.

The new wave of attacks comes as Ukrainian officials issue increasingly desperate appeals for more air defense weapons from their Western allies, which are running seriously low as Republicans in Congress continue to block a $60 billion aid bill.

The Ukrainian air defense is working "at the edge of its capacity," Oleksiy Melnyk, co-director of international security programs at the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center think tank, told CNN after the Kyiv attack.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on a tour of Baltic states Wednesday, said his country is "sorely lacking" modern air defense systems amid intensifying Russian attacks.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is also striking an increasingly exasperated tone. "Give us the damn Patriots," he told Politico in late March

Russia has long targeted Ukraine's civilian and energy infrastructure, stockpiling missiles and other long-range weapons in the summer to strike during winter.

The sophisticated air defense systems provided by Ukraine's Western allies, notably US Patriot air defense systems, were previously used to shield major cities like Kyiv from Russian attacks, meaning life could be lived relatively normally despite the war.

But more Russian missiles are now getting through, and Ukraine's second biggest city, Kharkiv, is facing increasingly intense Russian attacks, with its power supplies disabled for long stretches.

The attacks on Ukraine's infrastructure come as Ukrainian officials warn of a major Russian military drive in the summer to break through Ukraine's defensive lines in the east and south of the country.

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• Newark, LaGuardia, and JFK were ranked as the country's worst airports back in 2018.
• A $30 billion plan to upgrade the major New York and New Jersey airports has turned things around.
• Newark and LaGuardia have terminals ranked five stars by Skytrax, while construction is underway at JFK.

Two New York City-area airports are the only ones in North America with terminals rated five stars by Skytrax — and all it took was billions of dollars.

LaGuardia, Newark, and JFK used to be ranked among the country's worst airports. In 2018, travel news site The Points Guy ranked them as the three worst airports in the US. It based its ranking on amenities, accessibility, and timeliness.

But now, LaGuardia and Newark have been bestowed a rare badge of honor.

As a sign of how prestigious the Skytrax ranking can be, only 10 airlines are rated five stars, and they're all based in Asia.

When it comes to airports, Skytrax has three categories: hub airports, regional airports, and terminals. Of the 12 five star rated airports in the first category, three are in Europe, and the other nine are in Asia.

Houston William P. Hobby Airport makes the seven-strong list for regional airports — the only one in the US.

But only four terminals have been given five stars, including Newark's Terminal A and LaGuardia's Terminal B. The other two are at Paris Charles de Gaulle and Guangzhou Baiyun.

Skytrax says the rating is based on "exceptional standards of facilities and staff service to customers across all front-line areas of the airport environment."

So how did the turnaround happen? The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is in the midst of a $30 billion redevelopment of the three major airports it oversees.

$2.7 billion of that was spent upgrading the Newark Terminal, while $8 billion and six years were spent transforming LaGuardia.

And it might not be long before JFK Airport starts vying for a five-star rating as well. It's undergoing a $19 billion upgrade, which includes creating two new terminals and expanding existing ones.

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