It’s hard to believe that this beautiful heap of Beaux Arts majesty is 100 years old. But sure enough, Grand Central Terminal opened its doors to the commuting masses at midnight on Feb. 2, 1913, and soon became a world-renowned icon of transportation and capitalist might. In honor of Grand Central’s birthday, we take you back in time with 12 early, black-and-white snapshots of a timeless building, as well as the millions of busy travelers who have passed through it. 

Photos:

• Sunlight beams into the terminal, 1930. (Hal Morey/Getty Images)
• Members of the National Boys’ Club offer Victory shoe shines to every man and women in uniform in Grand Central’s USO Lounge on April 6, 1943. (AP Photo/Dan Grossi)

On April 20, 2010, an explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 people and spilled at least 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Now, a new report from Al Jazeera says sea creatures are showing up with horrible mutations as a side effect of the spill.

Among the disturbing mutations: Shrimp with tumors on their heads; fish that lack eyes or are missing flaps over their gills; fish with oozing sores; crabs with holes in their shells; crabs that are missing claws and spikes, or are encased in soft shells instead of hard ones.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Dr. Jim Cowan of Louisiana State University tells Al Jazeera. “The fishermen have never seen anything like this.” 

The new 3-D version of Titanic isn’t the only way folks are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the R.M.S. Titanic sinking. On March 10, the History Press started tweeting about events aboard the ship as they unfolded in real-time 100 years ago (@TitanicRealTime). Once the ship sets sail on April 10, expect “action-filled tweets leading up the Titanic’s infamous encounter with an iceberg,” says Jeremy Cabalona at Mashable.

Here, some other ways people will mark the 100th anniversary of Titanic’s sinking: 

• Dining like doomed upper-crust passengers
  Several restaurants nationwide are offering multi-course dinners based on menus from the Titanic’s first-class dining room. At the Houston eatery Cullen’s, for example, you can enjoy a four-hour, 10-course dinner for a paltry $12,000. It does include a historically accurate taste of Armagnac brandy from the year 1900.
   
• Retracing the Titanic’s route at sea
  British travel agency Miles Morgan Travel is offering two Titanic Memorial Cruises, one eight-day voyage that leaves from New York City on April 10 and a 12-night cruise that leaves Southampton, England — the Titanic’s departure point — on April 8. The Southampton cruise ship will trace the Titanic’s route (hopefully with a happier ending), and both ships will converge on the place where the Titanic went down, to hold a memorial service at 2:20 a.m. on April 15.
   
• Holding Titanic séances
  In Indianapolis, radio hosts Rachel E. Weinrich and Gregg Cable are doing a special live version of their BangaRang show on April 14, including a special centennial séance to commune with those who died when the Titanic sank. Others will try to channel spirits from salvaged Titanic items that are displayed at traveling exhibits. “There is a lot of energy and some spirits attached to the artifacts,” says Nellie Kampmann at the Paranormal Research Society.

More Titanic madness

The artifacts of 9/11: A photo slideshow

A fireman’s helmet, a pair of glasses, a burnt wallet: These are just a few of the items that — twisted, melted, muddied, and soiled — have become museum-worthy artifacts since they were recovered in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks that occurred in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. “Each object has its own story, and they’re connected to real individuals whose lives were changed, because all of our lives were changed.” View the rest of the slideshow here. 

In 2004, Rescue Me became the first scripted television show to directly address the effects of 9/11 on America. Over its seven seasons, the show, which stars Denis Leary as a veteran New York City firefighter grappling with alcoholism and the death of his cousin in the 9/11 attacks, has alternately been called both brave and insensitive. With the series finale set to air Wednesday night — just four days before the tenth anniversary of the attacks — critics are reflecting on Rescue Me’s groundbreaking portrayal of 9/11. Here, some talking points:

• Rescue Me accomplished the “impossible”
  As the nation reeled from tragedy, says Randee Dawn at MSNBC, it was “impossible to imagine” that a TV show could possibly make sense of 9/11. Yet that’s precisely what Rescue Me did. It offered a way to “refract our national outrage and sadness,” says David Wiegand at The San Francisco Chronicle. The show “helped us personalize not only what survivors and family members are still going through a decade later, but maybe what [the rest of us] are feeling as well.”

• It taught us to laugh off the tragedy
  Rescue Me found the “humor in sad situations and the sadness of lighter moments,” says Rick Bently at the Kansas City Star. Whenever things got too heavy on the show, says Molloy, “there was some banter about a penis that resembled a baby carrot, or a flatulent girlfriend, or an endless array of cheap stereotypes.” It’s the same humor that those who struggled to overcome the grief of the tragedy used, says show creator Peter Tolan. “This is how people move forward.”

• It honored and appealed to firefighters
  The life of a firefighter portrayed on Rescue Me was certainly “dizzying,” says Gilbert, swinging from “firehouse buffoonery to alcoholic grimness,” from “a whisper to full-on alarm in a matter of moments.” But firefighters quickly became some of the most passionate supporters of the show. “It showed we weren’t angels and were just doing a job,” says firefighter Lt. John Kilbane. We’re a “functionally dysfunctional family.”

More ways the show succeeded in handling 9/11

A little wine with your remembrance? To coincide with the tenth anniversary of the September 11 tragedy, Lieb Family Cellars, a vintner from Mattituck, Long Island, is producing two varieties of 9/11 Memorial Wine — 9/11 Memorial Commemorative Merlot and 9/11 Memorial Commemorative Chardonnay. The price? A rather on-the-nose $19.11 a bottle. Guess how much of the proceeds the winery is donating to the 9/11 Memorial Museum…