The weekend of April 14-15 brings us two important anniversaries in American history: Lincoln's assassination in 1865 and the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. How will you observe them? By:
1) (Re)Reading Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, by James L. Swanson?
2) (Re)Reading Lincoln's White House: The People's House in Wartime, by James B. Conroy?
3) Searching for that passage in Sarah Bernhardt's biography about the time when the Divine Sarah rescued Mary Lincoln from being swept overboard in a storm at sea?
4 (Re)Viewing All About Eve for "I"ve always denied the rumor you were in Our American Cousin the night Lincoln was shot"?
5) Singing "Nearer my God to Thee" in Sunday worship and fighting about whether the ship's musicians played the British or American version as the ship went down?
6) (Re)Viewing the laughable but infuriating Nazi propaganda film Titanic, which blames the accident on a corporate battle between Ismay and John Jacob Astor and shows the ship's sole German officer rescuing a small child as the ship sinks?
7) (Re)Viewing the Barbara Stanwyck/Clifton Web Titanic which is still a good film even if the characters are almost all fictional, because the dialogue is so good? "May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?" "As for you Mother, I love you dearly. But my address is Paris, France." "Could you be common in a slightly lower voice?" "Never send the baby to buy the beer."
8) (Re)Viewing A Night to Remember, still all these years later "the most factually accurate film about the sinking" as Eva Hart said at the 80th anniversary screening I arranged at the Coolidge in 1992, "and the others are just rrrrrrrrubbish!"
9) Attempting a couple recipes from Last Dinner on the Titanic?
10) (Re)Reading one of the many, many, many books about the sinking?
11) Leaving flowers at the dried-up fountain (now just outside the south grounds of the White House) erected by their friends in memory of Archibald Butt and Frank Millet?
12) (Re)Viewing the James Cameron Titanic, not least for Frances Fisher's performance as Kate Winslet's mother. ("Will the lifeboats be loaded according to class?")
Obviously there are quite a few ways, and I'll bet you could make up a few yourselves.