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Titanic
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A Titanic deckhand reassured a worried passenger that “God Himself could not sink this ship,” but a few hours later more than 1,520 were dead. Twenty minutes before midnight on April 14, 1912, the Titanic  struck an iceberg. Three hours later the largest and most expensive ship of its time vanished into the water some 400 miles south of Newfoundland. Because regulations had not kept up with the increasing size of ocean liners, the capacities of the Titanic’s lifeboats and rafts were more than a thousand shy of the number aboard. Adding to the human toll, many lifeboats departed only partly filled. There were only 705 survivors. Today the great ship lies dwarfed more than two miles beneath the surface of the North Atlantic. With the assistance of National Geographic Society funds, personnel, and equipment, a French-American team found the Titanic on September 1, 1985. Its remains were further explored in 1986.

Facts about the Titanic

It took 3,000 men two years to build the Titanic. Three million rivets held its massive hull together.

The Titanic stretched 882.5 feet (269 meters)—nearly six times the height of the Statue of Liberty. From its keel to the top of its four funnels, it measured 175 feet (53.3 meters), as tall as an 11-story building and weighed more than 46,000 tons (41,731 metric tons).

One-way transatlantic passage in the Titanic ’s best first-class suite cost U.S. $4,350, more than quadruple the average American’s annual wage in 1912. Among the ship’s luxuries: four passenger elevators; a 50-phone switchboard; gymnasium; Turkish bath; regulation-size squash court; hospital, including an operating room; photographic darkroom; five grand pianos; Parisian café; and mechanical camel rides.