Spotlight On: Sinking of the Lusitania

In 1915, the British passenger liner with 1,959 people on board was hit by torpedo from a German U-Boat. It took only eighteen minutes for the Lusitania to completely sink. Over 1,000 of the innocent passengers died from injuries, a many of them Americans. The boat was only fifteen miles from the Irish coast when it sank, but it took rescue boats almost four hours to arrive. This tragic event caused the United States to demand that Germany give up unrestricted submarine warfare, but there was little satisfaction, and Germany served no consequences for the action. The sinking of the Lusitania was also one of the major factors in the United States entering into World War I.