Olympic Collision

"What is an event? From a philosophical perspective, events are irregular occurrences--moments of change and interruption--categorized by human perception, language, and thought. While philosophers have pored over this subject extensively in recent years, The Event: Literature and Theory seeks to ground it: What is literature's approach to the event? How does literature produce and give testimony to events? Ilai Rowner's study not only revisits some of the most important thinkers of our time, including Maurice Blanchot, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and Martin Heidegger, it also develops a critical approach to literature that questions the meaning of the literary event through examinations of literary works by Marcel Proust, Louis-Ferdinand Ce;line, and T. S. Eliot. Rowner offers a new method of thinking about the particular characteristics of the event within literary works and defines the creative value of literature as the aspiration toward the un-happening within the happening. In this study the experience of literature--as an act of both writing and reading--becomes the struggle to capture the excessive movement of the event while yet revealing the creative energy within the work of literature. "--

Mary Decker's clash with Zola Budd at the 1984 Los Angeles Games is one of the biggest and most controversial events in Olympic history. In a head-to-head that gripped the imagination of the world, the 3000 metres race pitted the experienced and glamourous world champion from the host nation against a prodigious, teenage waif from South Africa wearing a hastily-organised British flag on her vest and, memorably, no shoes on her feet. Disastrously, a mid-race collision saw Decker tumble to the inside of the track after her legs tangled with Budd's as the 18-year-old overtook the American in a battle for pole position. Distraught and unable to carry on, the tearful Decker watched in frustration as Maricica Puica of Romania stormed to gold while Budd, who was heavily booed by the partisan crowd in the closing stages, faded to seventh. Using the famous Olympic moment as its focal point, Collision Course tells the story of two of the best-known and greatest athletes of al ltime, analyses their place in history as pioneers of women's sport, and lifts the lid on two lives that have been filled with sporting and political intrigue that, until now, has never been fully told.

The Titanic is one of the most famous maritime disasters of all time, but did the Titanic really sink on the morning of 15 April 1912? Titanic's older sister, the nearly identical Olympic, was involved in a serious accident in September 1911 - an accident that may have made her a liability to her owners the White Star Line. Since 1912 rumours of a conspiracy to switch the two sisters in an elaborate insurance scam has always loomed behind the tragic story of the Titanic. Could the White Star Line have really switched the Olympic with her near identical sister in a ruse to intentionally sink their mortally damaged flagship in April 1912, in order to cash in on the insurance policy? This book addresses some of these conspiracy theories and illustrates both the questionable anomalies and hard technical facts that will prove the swtich theory to be exactly what it is - a mere legend.

On October 20, 1910, RMS Olympic was launched at Belfast. She was the first of a trio of steamships constructed for the White Star Line and, when built, was the largest ship in the world.

A sumptuously illustrated history of the Titanic, her sinking and its aftermath.

The disaster which befell RMS Titanic has become one of the most investigated and analyzed maritime tragedies of all time. Yet there is much still to be untangled from the web of mystery which still surrounds this confused, catastrophic event. The people on board were proud to be part of the ship’s highly-publicised first voyage, but as the first batch of officers reported for duty in Belfast to prepare her for her trial trip to Southampton and beyond, they could not have imagined the fate which awaited them. Titanic was, after all, ‘unsinkable’. It is exclusively through the eyes of seven unlucky men – the small group of officers onboard for that doomed voyage – that the author reveals the tragedy as it unfolded that night in April 1912. From their assignment to the White Star liner through to their eventual fates. Each one of these seven men behaved with great courage and discipline in a situation beyond anything they had previously experienced and some of the officers left accounts of the horrors they witnessed. Of this small group, four were members of the Royal Naval Reserve; this included Charles Lightoller, who was the Second Officer and in charge of loading passengers into lifeboats on the port side. He was noted for strictly enforcing the ‘women and children only’ principle, allowing only those men needed for manning the boats to join them. Four of the seven officers survived the ordeal. As the author reveals, one of them had only been formally appointed to the crew the day before Titanic sailed on its climatic maiden voyage. This was Henry Tingle Wilde, who was scheduled to sail with Titanic’s sister ship, Olympic, but who was switched to Titanic as the Chief Officer. He reported for duty on the very day the ship departed Southampton. This move meant a reshuffle of the officers and, as only seven officers were deemed necessary, Second Officer David Blair was removed from the crew list and sent ashore. He was certainly the luckiest of all. The unfortunate Wilde went down to the bottom with his ship. Of the many questions asked about that night is that of the fate of Captain Edward Smith. His body was never recovered and it had naturally been assumed that he too had been lost. In Titanic’s Unlucky Seven, James Bancroft questions if this might not actually be the case. There is evidence that Smith may have survived the sinking, and was seen and spoken to months after the event by a man who had sailed with him, and who had known him personally for most of his life. Certainly, Smith had good reason to disappear into obscurity. For the first time, a clear picture of the incidents, actions and events leading up to and during the sinking of Titanic can be seen through the stories of the seven men in charge that night.

Ren Gerdvilis is a young physics professor whose family immigrated to the South Pacific nation of Aotearoa after World War II. He has long had a sense that there is more to life than meets the eye, and yet he proceeds with his life normally, spending time with friends and colleagues and falling in love. After a horrible accident that leaves Ren clinically dead for some time, he returns from heaven with a profound sense of the immense disparities occurring on the planet. He sees what his own family has endured, and he also observes how the present time has deteriorated to the point of imminent apocalypse. But while the forces of good have supernatural agents in the form of emissaries from heaven, the forces of evil have the Beasts, beings who have Ren in their sights and intend to eliminate him. Can he and his newfound love, Monia, survive to rid the world of torment, apathy, and greed, or will the Beasts prevail and bring about a world of darkness? In this novel, after a terrible accident, a young professor experiences a profound change in the way he sees the world and pits himself against the supernatural agents of evil.

Commander Edward John Smith's career had been a remarkable example of how a man from a humble background could get far in the world. Born to a working-class family in the landlocked Staffordshire Potteries, he went to sea at the age of 17 and rose rapidly through the ranks of the merchant navy, serving first in sailing vessels and later in the new steamships of the White Star Line. By 1912, he as White Star's senior commander and regarded by many in the shipping world as the 'millionaire's captain'. In 1912, Smith was given command of the new RMS Titanic for her maiden voyage, but what should have been among the crowning moments of his long career at sea turned rapidly into a nightmare following Titanic's collision with an iceberg. In a matter of hours the supposedly unsinkable ship sank, taking over 1,500 people with her, including Captain Smith.