The true stories behind the surprises in Construction Empire

Titanic, 1912: the “unsinkable” ship

Titanic left Southampton for New York on 10 April 1912. At about 269 m long she was among the largest ships of her time, and the press and public called her “practically unsinkable”. About 2,224 people were on board, passengers and crew.

At around 23:40 on 14 April the ship struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic. The impact opened several of the forward watertight compartments. The design could survive some of them flooding, but not that many. Shortly after 2:20 on 15 April Titanic sank. More than 1,500 people died.

One reason the death toll was so high is that the lifeboats had room for only about half of the people on board. This was within the rules of the time, which had not been written for ships that big. After the disaster the rules changed: the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) followed, and lifeboats had to carry everyone.

The wreck was found only in 1985, at a depth of about 3,800 m. The ship lies in two main pieces, hundreds of metres apart, confirming that she broke up as she sank.

Loch Ness: the lake that keeps a secret

Loch Ness in Scotland is about 37 km long and up to about 230 m deep. Because of that depth it holds more fresh water than all the lakes of England and Wales combined. The water is dark with peat and visibility below the surface is poor.

The oldest tale comes from the life of St Columba, a 6th-century Irish monk who, according to the text, drove away a “beast” from the River Ness. The modern story of “Nessie”, however, begins in 1933. That year a new road was built along the north shore, the view of the water opened up and newspapers began to report sightings.

The most famous picture, the so-called “surgeon’s photograph” of 1934, was long taken as proof. In the 1990s people involved admitted it had been staged: a model head and neck fixed to a toy submarine.

In 2018 scientists collected water samples and looked for traces of DNA from everything living in the loch. The results, published in 2019, showed plenty of eel DNA but no trace of a large reptile.

The Bermuda Triangle: a legend with a birthday

The phrase “Bermuda Triangle” first appeared in 1964, in an article by Vincent Gaddis in an American magazine. The area is usually described as lying between Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico, but it has no official borders and does not exist as a separate zone on nautical charts.

The best-known case is Flight 19: on 5 December 1945 five US Navy TBM Avenger torpedo bombers vanished on a training flight off Florida. The flying boat sent to search for them was lost as well. The official inquiry reached no firm conclusion, but bad weather, lost bearings and running out of fuel are the most likely explanation.

The other big case is the US Navy collier USS Cyclops, which disappeared in 1918 with 306 people on board. Her wreck has never been found.

Yet when the insurers at Lloyd’s of London and the US Coast Guard looked at the data, they found no more losses there than in other busy sea areas. The region has heavy traffic, sudden storms and a strong current, the Gulf Stream. The legend lives on not because the numbers are unusual, but because the stories are good.

Dracula: the ruler, the novel and the castle

The historical “Dracula” is Vlad III (1431–1476), ruler of Wallachia, also known as Vlad the Impaler. The name Dracula means “son of Dracul”: his father was a member of the Order of the Dragon, a chivalric order, and so was called Vlad Dracul.

The literary count came much later. The novel “Dracula” by the Irish writer Bram Stoker was published in 1897. Stoker never went to Romania. He described Transylvania from books, travel accounts and maps he read in London. According to scholars he took from Vlad mainly the name and a few vague details.

Bran Castle near Brașov is first documented in 1377 and is now a museum. Tourists know it as “Dracula’s Castle”, but its link to Vlad III is tenuous: there is no reliable record that Vlad lived there. The association comes more from the castle’s look: a rock, towers and the Carpathians all around, just as in the novel.

Sherlock Holmes: the detective of Baker Street

Sherlock Holmes first appeared in 1887 in “A Study in Scarlet” by the physician Arthur Conan Doyle.

The famous address, 221B Baker Street, did not exist then: the street’s numbering did not go that high. Today the street has a Sherlock Holmes museum, and the address is better known than many real ones.

For Holmes’s method Doyle himself named his teacher in Edinburgh, Dr Joseph Bell, as an inspiration. Bell could tell from a patient’s appearance and walk where they came from and what they did for a living. Observation first, then deduction: exactly how Holmes works.

The thick London fog we now link with the stories was quite real. Coal smoke from the city mixed with fog created a yellowish smog that Londoners called a “pea-souper”.

The Empire State Building: 410 days to the sky

The Empire State Building in New York was built in about 410 days between 1930 and 1931 and opened on 1 May 1931.

The building is about 443 m tall to the tip of its antenna and was the tallest in the world for about 40 years, until the early 1970s, when the World Trade Center overtook it. The mast on top was originally designed as a mooring point for airships. The idea did not work: the strong winds at that height made docking almost impossible.

In 1933 the film “King Kong” made the building a cinema icon with its final scene, in which the giant gorilla climbs to the top.

Why we put true stories into a game

The surprises in the game are not just a joke. When you see a scene for the first time, a short story with the key facts appears beside it. The aim is for the game to leave you with something too: a date, a name, a reason. That is why we keep the facts checkable and call legends legends.

If you are curious how landmarks look after dark, read our article on night lighting of landmarks. The game is free in your browser at imperia.temidasoft.com.