For stewardess Violet Jessop, bad luck came in threes. In 1911 she was working on the RMS Olympic when it collided with a British warship off the Isle of Wight.

A few months later she took a position on the Titanic, which sank famously in the North Atlantic in 1912. Her lifeboat was picked up by the Carpathia.

And in 1916 she was working as a nurse on the hospital ship Britannic when it struck a mine in the Aegean Sea and went down.

By this time she was philosophical. Though the Britannic sank in less than 50 minutes, she took care to rescue her toothbrush, “because there had always been much fun at my expense after the Titanic, when I complained of my inability to get a toothbrush on the Carpathia. I recalled [my brother’s] joking advice: ‘Never undertake another disaster without first making sure of your toothbrush.'”

After that her bad luck ceased. She lived without incident for another 55 years and died of heart failure in 1971.