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00:00From a real estate king worth nearly $3 billion who slipped his pregnant wife into a lifeboat
00:04and stepped back into the dark, to a mining heir who changed into a white tie to die like a
00:09gentleman, here are six billionaires' deaths on the Titanic that changed the course of human history.
00:15John Jacob Astor V, the richest passenger of them all.
00:19If you wanted to put a face on Gilded Age wealth, you would have chosen John Jacob Astor IV,
00:24because at the time of his death his personal fortune sat at roughly $87 million, a sum that
00:30translates into somewhere around $2.9 billion in today's money. He was the great-grandson of the
00:35German immigrant who built America's first great fortune through fur trading and Manhattan real
00:40estate, and he carried that empire forward in spectacular fashion. He built the towering
00:44Astoria Hotel beside his cousins Waldorf, fusing them into the legendary Waldorf Astoria, and he
00:50created the magnificent St. Regis, but the man was more than a landlord to the elite. He was an
00:55inventor who patented a bicycle brake and a machine for producing gas from peat moss, and he was even
01:01a published science fiction author. When the iceberg struck, Astor was traveling with his young, pregnant
01:06second wife Madeline, a marriage that had scandalized New York society because of their enormous age
01:11difference. At first he calmly dismissed the danger, even slicing open a spare life belt to show his wife
01:17what was inside, reassuring her they were safer here than in that little boat. But as the gravity of the
01:22situation became undeniable, he guided Madeline into lifeboat 4, kissed her goodbye, and asked only for
01:28the boat's number so he might find her afterward. He stepped back into the freezing dark, and the
01:33wealthiest man aboard went down with the ship. His body was recovered days later, identified by the initials
01:39sewn into his jacket and the gold pocket watch his son would wear for the rest of his life.
01:45Benjamin Guggenheim was the fifth of seven sons born into one of the most formidable industrial
01:54dynasties America has ever known, a family that built a colossal empire out of copper, silver,
01:59and lead mining. While his more disciplined brothers poured themselves into the family machine,
02:04Benjamin took a different path, breaking off on his own in 1910, embracing an extravagant playboy
02:10lifestyle, and pouring his energy into the international steam pump company. He was in
02:14many ways, the black sheep of an empire building clan, a man who preferred pleasure and traveled
02:19to the relentless grind of his siblings. And so when he boarded the Titanic at Cherbourg,
02:23he did so not with his estranged wife back in New York, but with his French mistress, his valet,
02:28and his chauffeur in tow. He slept through the collision entirely, and had to be woken by his bedroom
02:33steward, Henry Etches, who fitted him with a bulky life belt that Benjamin grumbled would hurt.
02:38He and his valet helped women and children into the boats, but as it became clear there simply
02:43weren't enough seats to go around, Benjamin made a decision that would echo through history.
02:48He returned to his cabin, stripped off the life belt and the heavy sweater, and changed into full
02:53white tie evening dress, placing a single rose in his buttonhole. He told the steward they had dressed
02:58in their best and were prepared to go down like gentlemen. Then he sent a final message for his wife,
03:03insisting that no woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward.
03:07His body was never recovered, but his daughter Peggy would go on to reshape the world of modern art.
03:13Isidore and Ida Strauss, a love that refused to be divided
03:17Isidore Strauss was the very picture of the American immigrant dream made real,
03:22a German-Jewish boy who arrived in Georgia as a child and rose to co-own the most famous
03:27department store in the world, RH. Macy Ko, building alongside it a sprawling empire of glassware,
03:34China and retail innovation. He served briefly as a United States congressman, devoted himself to
03:39philanthropy and amassed a fortune estimated between three and four million dollars, worth
03:44well over a hundred million today. But it is not his wealth that the world remembers. It is the way
03:49he
03:49and his wife Ida chose to die. After more than 40 years of marriage, a marriage so close that they
03:55exchanged daily letters whenever business pulled them apart, the elderly couple found themselves on the
03:59boat deck as the Titanic settled lower into the sea. Ida was offered a seat in Lifeboat 8,
04:04a place among the first-class women being saved. She refused it. She would not leave her husband's
04:09side, and according to the accounts that followed, she declared some version of,
04:13I will not be separated from my husband. As we have lived, so we will die together.
04:17She gave her fur coat to her maid, who took the seat in her place, and Isidore,
04:22offered preferential treatment as an elderly man, refused any privilege not granted to the other men
04:27aboard. The survivor Colonel Archibald Gracie, who watched it unfold, called it a most remarkable
04:33exhibition of love and devotion. The couple was last seen sitting calmly together as the waters rose.
04:39Today, a memorial in Manhattan's Strauss Park carries the words,
04:42lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in death, they were not divided.
04:47George Dunton Widener, The Streetcar King of Philadelphia
04:51George Dunton Widener carried one of the largest fortunes in all of Philadelphia,
04:54and that is saying something extraordinary, because his family sat near the very summit
04:59of American Gilded Age wealth. His father, a former butcher, had clawed his way up to become
05:04a titan of industry through streetcar monopolies and shrewd investments in U.S. Steel, American
05:09tobacco and Standard Oil. And by the turn of the century, the family's collective worth was estimated
05:15at around $100 million. George was no idle heir coasting on his father's name. He ran the Philadelphia
05:21Attraction Company, overseeing the massive and lucrative transition from horse-drawn carriages
05:26and cable cars to the modern electric streetcar systems that electrified the cities of America,
05:32and he held directorships across banks, battery companies and cement firms. On that final night
05:37aboard the Titanic, George and his son had actually hosted a dinner for Captain Smith himself in the
05:42a la carte restaurant. After the collision, George escorted his wife Eleanor and her maid safely to
05:48Lifeboat 4, then was last seen deep in conversation with other doomed men as the great ship slipped
05:53away. His body, like so many others, was never recovered, and his death sent the family fortune
05:58cascading down a new and unexpected path. Harry Elkins Widener, the young bibliophile who loved books
06:04more than empires. Aboard that same ship, sharing in that same family tragedy, was George's eldest son,
06:11Harry Elkins Widener, only 27 years old and heir to one of the greatest industrial fortunes in the nation.
06:16But Harry was a different kind of rich man's son, the kind who found the cold machinery of streetcars
06:22and steel far less thrilling than the quiet beauty of a rare first edition. A Harvard graduate and an
06:27obsessive, passionate book collector, Harry had assembled some 3,000 volumes of English literature,
06:33treasured Dickens, Stevenson, and a Shakespeare first folio he purchased with his mother's help
06:38for a small fortune. His doting grandfather reportedly fretted that the young man's collecting habit might
06:43one day impoverish the entire family, and Harry himself confessed to dealers that he had taken
06:47on as much debt as he could carry in pursuit of beautiful books. His personal estate at death was
06:52valued at $150,000, equivalent to roughly $5 million today, though his beloved collection alone would
06:59later be valued at $3 million. Legend insists that on that fatal night he returned to his cabin to
07:05retrieve a rare and precious volume, though his own mother never confirmed the tale. What is documented is
07:10that Harry helped his mother into lifeboat four, then declined a seat for himself, reportedly telling
07:15a friend, I think I'll stay here for a while, choosing to take his chances with the big ship.
07:20He perished alongside his father, and his body was never found. Yet from that loss came something
07:25enduring. His grieving mother built the magnificent Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library at Harvard,
07:31which still stands at the heart of the university today.
07:34Charles Melville Hayes, The Railroad Visionary Who Predicted His Own Doom
07:39Charles Melville Hayes was not born into wealth like the Astors or the Wideners, but he climbed the
07:45ladder of American and Canadian railroading with such relentless brilliance that he became one of the
07:50most powerful infrastructure men of his age. Starting as a 17-year-old clerk in a St. Louis passenger
07:55department, he rose to become president of Canada's Grand Trunk Railway, dragging a near-bankrupt
08:01company into one of its most prosperous eras through sheer organizational genius. He commanded
08:06an enormous salary for the time, between $25,000 and $35,000 a year. And he dreamed enormous dreams,
08:14championing the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, a second transcontinental line stretching some 3,600
08:20miles across Canadian soil, complete with luxury hotels and a Pacific port he helped will into existence.
08:26He was traveling home in 1912 to seek financing and to attend the grand opening of his Chateau
08:32Laurier Hotel in Ottawa. And here is where his story turns almost unbearably prophetic.
08:38On that final night, sitting in the smoking lounge with Colonel Archibald Gracie,
08:43Hayes mused darkly about the reckless race to build ever larger and faster ocean liners,
08:48warning that the trend would soon be checked by some appalling disaster at sea. Within hours,
08:53his own grim prediction came true beneath his very feet. His body was recovered days later,
08:59identified by a gold pocket watch engraved with his initials, and returned to Montreal aboard his
09:04own private railway car. That brings us to the end of this video,
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