The sinking of the S.S. Eastland will be commemorated this July on it's 100th anniversary. But now, you can see motion pictures of the Eastland disaster for the first time, thanks to an accidental discovery by a UIC graduate student. 
 
 Jeff Nichols, a graduate student in history at UIC, was doing online research about World War I, when the 1915 newsreel he was viewing displayed a headline, and then video, from the S.S. Eastland disaster in Chicago. 
 
 On Friday night, he posted the video on the website of the Eastland Disaster Historical Society, which had been looking for video of the tragedy for years. 
 
 Ted Wachholz, Executive Director of the Eastland Disaster Historical Society, said, “I got chills, I got goose bumps, from head to toe. I don't think I've ever had an experience quite like that before.” 
 
 With 2,500 people packed on board, the vessel rolled onto its side and sank in the Chicago River, just west of the Clark Street Bridge. Eight hundred and forty-four passengers and crew died. 
 
 Still photos show video photographers were on the scene, so it's always been believed that motion pictures of the disaster existed. Nichols actually found two videos in the Dutch archives he was researching. One showed the work of the first responders, the second showed efforts to raise the sunken ship a week later. 
 
 “Seeing actual firemen and policemen and other responders engaged in the rescue and recovery, seeing the movement of the Chicago River, seeing the debris floating on the river, and just seeing that actually in motion is just so much different than still pictures,” said Wachholz. 
 
 Wachholz said this discovery has special significance, not just because of the anniversary this year, but also because Marion Eichholz, the last known living survivor of the Eastland disaster, just passed away last November. ||||| (CBS) — Nearly 100 years later, rare video of one of Chicago’s greatest tragedies has been discovered. 
 
 On Saturday, July 24, 1915 the passenger ship Eastland rolled over while tied to a dock in the Chicago River, killing at least 844 people on board. The boat was preparing for a Lake Michigan cruise to Michigan City, Indiana for a Western Electric employee picnic. 
 
 Jeffery Nichols, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, came across the footage while perusing a European website last week. He had been working on his doctoral dissertation. 
 
 “It was a ‘Holy cow’ moment. I was shocked. I was surprised,” he tells CBS 2’s Pamela Jones. 
 
 The film, from the EYE Film Instituut Nederland, includes footage of rescuers walking on the overturned hull to help survivors and a second clip shows the attempt to remove the ship from the Chicago River. 
 
 The Eastland Disaster Historical Society says the film humanizes the tragedy like never before. The organization says it’s the first time footage of the disaster has been found. 
 
 “The film footage discovered by Mr. Jeff Nichols is the single most important discovery from research over the past 100 years for those who are interested in the history of the Eastland Disaster,” Ted Wachholz, Executive Director and Chief Historian of EDHS said in a news release. “Over the past 16 years, EDHS has pursued numerous leads, driven hundreds of miles, sent emails, and made phone calls all while responding to reports of possible film footage of the Eastland Disaster. All of these previous leads have ended without any results. Late Friday, however, Mr. Nichols was gracious enough to share his discovery on our Facebook page, which was a very unselfish act. All of us at EDHS and many more who follow us have gotten chills upon viewing this incredible footage, and we know that thousands more will experience the same.” 
 
 Surviving passenger Libby Hruby was just 10 years old when the disaster happened. She returned to the Chicago River in 1995 to commemorate the 80th anniversary. 
 
 “I remember all the commotion, and the people, the sirens,” she said then. 
 
 She died in 2004. 
 
 The film clips can be viewed at www.eastlanddisaster.org/news. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| For years, Ted Wachholz had all the evidence he needed to believe that film footage of the 1915 SS Eastland disaster on the Chicago River existed, except maybe for the film itself. 
 
 The chief historian of a group dedicated to the capsizing that killed 844 people could cite newspaper clippings that refer to recording equipment and archived photos that show movie cameras on tripods. 
 
 That changed Saturday morning, when the founder of the Eastland Disaster Historical Society woke up to links on the group's Facebook page to footage posted by a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 
 
 "I'm reasonably confident that this is the first opportunity that the public has had … to view moving picture footage from the Eastland disaster," Wachholz said. 
 
 According to Wachholz, UIC graduate student Jeff Nichols found the footage while researching his dissertation on Chicago during World War I. While looking through archived footage at the EYE Film Institute in the Netherlands, he came across clips of the SS Eastland on the Chicago River pancaked between clips of ceremonies and marching soldiers. 
 
 "Partway into the video clip … there's this amazing 55-second clip of live moving pictures of the Eastland disaster," Wachholz said. 
 
 The first clip, available at http://www.eastlanddisaster.org/news, shows police officers, volunteers and firefighters walking on the hull of the capsized ship. The footage was taken within an hour of the tragedy, Wachholz believes, because ships can be seen in the background and ordinary citizens are walking on the hull. 
 
 Grad student finds footage of 1915 ship disaster A graduate student has found the first-known film clips of the SS Eastland ship disaster that left 844 people dead in 1915. The ship was headed to a company picnic when it capsized in the Chicago River. A graduate student has found the first-known film clips of the SS Eastland ship disaster that left 844 people dead in 1915. The ship was headed to a company picnic when it capsized in the Chicago River. See more videos 
 
 "It was a free-for-all early on," Wachholz said. "Anyone who was able to help out and contribute was jumping to the scene." 
 
 Based on the angle and proximity to the hull, the cameraman was likely on a nearby raft or small boat, he added. 
 
 A second clip, 30 seconds long, was taken at least a week later when the ship was righted. Because cameras were expensive and hard to come by back then, Wachholz said, chances are that the film was taken by a professional. 
 
 What Wachholz doesn't know is how the footage ended up in the Netherlands or sandwiched between war footage. 
 
 "That's part of the intrigue, part of the mystery behind even having this footage available," Wachholz said. 
 
 Just as notable of the film's existence, he said, is the timing of its emergence, months before the 100 anniversary of the disaster. The tragedy's last known survivor, Marion Eichholz, died a few months short of her 103rd birthday last November. She was 3 years old at the time of the capsizing. 
 
 "(The footage) gives us, at least, the next best thing to having a living survivor with us," Wachholz said. 
 
 mmrodriguez@tribpub.com 
 
 Twitter @merjourn ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
– Ted Wachholz couldn't believe his eyes: He opened Facebook and saw film footage of the SS Eastland disaster, which claimed 844 lives on the Chicago River in 1915, the Chicago Tribune reports. "I'm reasonably confident that this is the first opportunity that the public has had" to see footage of the disaster, says Wachholz, who heads the Eastland Disaster Historical Society. One clip (here, starting at the 1:10 minute mark) shows firefighters, volunteers, and police officers walking on the capsized ship, which was about to go to Indiana for a Western Electric employee picnic when it tipped over while tied to a dock, CBS Chicago reports. "It was a free-for-all early on," says Wachholz. "Anyone who was able to help out and contribute was jumping to the scene." A second clip (here, starting at 9:10) shows the righted ship a week later. Wachholz figures the footage was taken by a professional (considering how expensive cameras were back then) from a small boat or raft floating nearby. What's more mysterious is how the footage cropped up: A US doctoral candidate found the footage, which is housed at a Netherlands film institute, while doing online research for his dissertation on Chicago during the First World War. The clips were spliced between footage of marching soldiers and ceremonies, and it's not clear how it got there. "That's part of the intrigue, part of the mystery behind even having this footage available," says Wachholz. The student then posted his find on the historical society's Facebook page. The footage itself gives him "chills" and "goose bumps," Wachholz tells MyFox Chicago. "I don't think I've ever had an experience quite like that before." (Secrets of a 1629 mutiny and massacre were recently unearthed.)