Arrivée de Fahim Kouchakji à New York, 1910

Le 3 juin 2016, Dina Kouhakji, une cousine d'Amérique, très active sur le groupe fbk : I'm a Kouchakji, Kouchakgi, Kouchacji or married to one "family tree", postait un message à mon attention.

Elle venait de retrouver un document qui atteste de l'arrivée de mon grand oncle, Fahim Kouchakji, alors âgé de 24 ans, à New-York le 5 novembre 1910, à bord du RMS Lusitania, navire de la British Ocean Liner qui fera naufrage en 1915 à la suite de l'attaque d'un sous-marin allemand, déclenchant l'entrée en guerre des Etats-Unis.

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On November 5, 1910, 24-year-old Fahim Kouchakji, son of Joseph Georges Kouchakji of the famous "Kouchakji Freres", boarded the British Ocean Liner RMS Lusitania in Liverpool, England to go work with his uncle Habib Kouchakji at the Kouchakji Freres' Antiques Dealership in New York, while the other brothers remained in Europe to manage the Paris store.

Fahim arrived in New York on November 11, 1910.

By 1910, the Lusitania had been in the waters for 4 years. She was the world's largest passenger ship until the Mauretania came along.

Then, on May 7, 1915 the unthinkable happened: A German submarine sank the RMS Lusitania, causing the death of 1,200 civilian passengers. This horrifying crime began the chain of events that dragged the United States into World War I.

Here's a TIME article that describes the eerie links between the Lusitania and the Titanic, the latter sinking 3 years earlier. http://time.com/3840371/lusitania-100-years/

Note: I found several age-related inaccuracies on various passenger and census lists (maybe they lied about their age? I don't know). Therefore, calculating any age by using the birth date will render the most accurate results.