The Istoriaphile’s Corner

My ex-boss and I used to have the same discussion every year on this date.  April the fifteenth was a historic day for both of us for different reasons, neither of which had to do with taxes.  Both were watershed events with long-term ramifications and my boss and I would debate which one had the greater historical impact.  I wish I agreed with my boss: Jackie Robinson’s debut as the first African-American player on a Major League Baseball team is a thing worth celebrating because it marked progress toward real democracy in America.  Unfortunately, thirty-five years before Mr. Robinson walked onto the field, April fifteenth dawned over a flat, cold Atlantic and a handful of huddled lifeboats where a magnificent ocean liner should have been.  Taxes and baseball are national but the world changed with the sinking of the Titanic.Titanic’s tragedy was a world-wide event.  Although almost half of the souls on her board were either American or British, the rest came from every corner of the globe. Citizens from every inhabited continent set sail in Titanic and when she went down families in twenty-seven countries lost loved ones. (Japan’s sole passenger, Masabumi Hosono, survived the wreck but was ostracized…