Astor himself was to meet an untimely end, being one of the 1,514 people who perished in the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15th 1912. The richest passenger aboard the doomed vessel, he was thought to be among the richest people in the world at the time, with a net worth of $85,000,000 when he died. Astor's prominence led to the creation of many exaggerated and unsubstantiated accounts about his actions during the sinking of the Titanic, one of the most famous being that, as the ship hit he iceberg, he quipped, "I asked for ice, but this is ridiculous." One of his major legacies was the Walforf Astoria hotel in New York, formed when his Astoria hotel was merged with the adjacent Waldorf owned by his cousin in 1897. The hotel coincidentally became the host location for the U.S. inquiries into the sinking of the Titanic.