April 15, 2026 marks the 114th anniversary of the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic. The ocean liner was on its maiden voyage from England to New York when it struck an iceberg. More than 1,500 passengers and crew members died. The tragedy prompted changes to maritime safety rules.
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A major figure who helped save lives hailed from Colorado. Margaret “Molly” Brown has been immortalized on stage and screen. Her home in Denver is also a museum.
Many who survived the Titanic owe their lives to Brown’s heroic actions. Andrea Malcomb is the vice president and museum director of Historic Denver. She told KUNC Brown was a polyglot, and that came in handy during the ship’s evacuation.
“She was able to speak languages like French and German, and really work with those passengers to figure out: had they lost someone? What did they need? [She] made sure that they had food and blankets and that their health was being attended to,” Malcomb said.
Once she and other survivors were rescued by the ship Carpathia, Brown set to work on humanitarian efforts. She formed a committee to raise funds in support of Titanic survivors.
Malcomb said Brown used her first-class status to pressure wealthy peers.
“She set up a board in one of the primary spaces on the Carpathia where she wrote down the names of those who pledged money towards the survivors’ fund. She also had a column for those who said ‘no’ to her,” Malcomb said.
Brown focused the funds on reuniting third-class passengers with their families and connecting them with embassies and other resources.
Malcomb told KUNC the stories of Brown and the Titanic continue to endure in people’s imaginations over a century later because of more than the mysterious circumstances behind one of the largest peacetime maritime disasters in history.
“It's this morality play where we like to put ourselves in that moment,” Malcomb said. “Who would we be in that moment? Would we have been one of those third-class immigrant passengers down in the bottom of the ship, trying to make their way up onto a boat deck? Would we have been a Mrs. Brown who stepped in to try to help as many people as she could? Would we have been a first-class passenger who sat back and said, ‘Nope, I am going to stay behind and I'm going to go down with the ship?’ It sort of gets us in our heads [about] how we respond to disasters as a person, as a society.”
To mark the Titanic's anniversary, the Molly Brown House Museum has opened a new exhibit featuring artifacts from the ship, including dinnerware, souvenirs and a letter a passenger sent from the craft before leaving port.
The museum is located at 1340 Pennsylvania Street. It's open for visitors Tuesday through Sunday every week.
