February 12, 1809. Two boys enter the world on the same day, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, into lives that could not be more different — and yet both will reshape the way humanity understands itself. Abraham Lincoln is born in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky. His mother will die when he is nine. He will teach himself to read by firelight. He will grow up to hold a country together with his bare hands.

April 15, 1865. Abraham Lincoln dies from an assassin’s bullet in Washington D.C. The nation goes into mourning. A presidency, a war, an era — all ending in a boarding house bedroom before breakfast. April 15, 1912. The RMS Titanic slips beneath the North Atlantic, taking 1,500 people with her. The unsinkable ship, sunk. The century’s confidence in technology, punctured. Same date. Forty-seven years apart. Both events redefine what Americans — and the world — believe is possible.