On the evening of April 14, 1912, when the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage to New York, the world suddenly changed for many people. The ship had been carefully divided into socioeconomic classes, with the ultrawealthy dining on caviar and vintage wines in sumptuous feast halls and the poorest dregs of society scraping for crusts of bread in steerage. As reality gradually sunk in and the passengers realized that the ship was going down and no help was on the way, those class-based barriers largely evaporated. With the exception of a few callow, upper-class passengers, the scant lifeboats were filled with women and children of all societal ranks with the wealthy awaiting their inevitable fate alongside the poorest of the poor. Many wealthy people were lost, including John Jacob Astor IV, who would be a billionaire several times over in today’s money. The North…
Are Spacewalks Now the Province of the Super Rich? – HotAir
