Fact-checking QAnon conspiracy theories: Did J.P. Morgan sink the Titanic?

When the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, several well-known millionaires were counted among the 1,503 dead. “Noted Men on the Lost Titanic,” announced a New York Times headline: “Col. Jacob Astor, with His Wife; Isidor Straus and Wife, and Benj. Guggenheim Abroad.” Obituaries followed for Astor, the New York builder of hotels and skyscrapers; Straus, a banker and owner of Macy’s department store; and Guggenheim, a builder of mining machinery.

But one of the world’s richest men had avoided his fate.

J. Pierpont Morgan “had thought earlier in the year to return to America on the ill-fated Titanic,” The Washington Post reported on April 19. “Then Mr. Morgan decided to lengthen his stay abroad.”

Now, 106 years later, the pro-Trump online conspiracy-theory group QAnon has made Morgan the villain of a wildly implausible story. In its sinister tale, Morgan sank the Titanic to assassinate Astor, Straus and Guggenheim, his supposed rival millionaires.