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Titanic lifeboats on their way to the Carpathia following sinking of Titanic
Titanic lifeboats on their way to the Carpathia following sinking of Titanic Reuters

It is a century since the ill-fated Titanic hit an iceberg in the early hours of 15 April, 1912 and sank in the Atlantic Ocean. The generally accepted explanation for the accident is that the captain failed to correctly spot the size of an iceberg, which led to the tragedy.

However, in a new turn of events, an Indian newspaper - The Hindu - offers other explanations why the tragic event occurred. Quoting a book by Tim Maltin, Titanic: A Very Deceiving Night, The Hindu said there could be two precise reasons why the Titanic sank that day.

The first says Earth's nearness to the Moon and the Sun - a proximity not matched in more than 1,000 years - resulted in record tides that help explain why the Titanic encountered so much ice, including the fatal iceberg. The conclusion was reached by a team of researchers from the Texas State University, working in collaboration with Sky& Telescope magazine. They published their findings in the magazine's April issue.

"We don't claim that our idea is conclusive," Donald Olson, a physicist at Texas State, said in an interview. However, he did also say that there was an increasing amount of evidence that seemed to be pointing to a similar direction.

A second, put forward by a Tim Maltin, a Titanic historian from Britain, contends the icy waters created ideal conditions for an unusual type of mirage that hid icebergs from lookouts and confused a nearby ship as to the liner's identity, delaying rescue efforts for hours.

As the world remembers the tragedy, it also begins another round of questioning and retrospective investigations.

"There were no heroes, no villains. Instead, there were a lot of human beings trying to do their best in the situation as they saw it," Maltin explained.

The Titanic was, in its time, the world's most luxurious ship... and it met with the greatest tragedy of all times. In memoriam, this year another cruise ship, the Balmoral, is retracing the voyage of the Titanic and will conduct a memorial service at the same spot where, a 100 years earlier, the ship sank.

Check out some rare black and white photographs...