Interesting TITANIC trivia
By dogsnme
@dogsnme (1264)
United States
March 12, 2009 9:22pm CST
I thought it might be fun to post some interesting trivia about TITANIC: both the movie and history. Here goes:
1. During the first manned submersible dive to Titanic, the crew got to look at the wreck for only 10 seconds.
2. The last Titanic survivor's body was pulled from the Atlantic in June of 1912; roughly 2 months after the tragedy.
3. The first manned expedition to the Titanic wreck was sponsored by the U.S. Navy.
4. Morgan Robertson's novel, Futility, about a tragic shipwreck, bore amazing similarities to the Titanic tragedy. The ship's name in his novel was Titan. Both sank after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic, and like Titanic, the Titan was also struck on its starboard side. Some other stats comparing the two ships are: capacity (3,000), lifeboats (Titan-24, Titanic-20), propellers (3), month of accident (April), time of accident (Titan-near midnight, Titanic-11:40 PM). Robertson's novel was published in 1898, 14 years before Titanic's sinking.
5. The Titanic was never christened.
6. On the night of the disaster, the air temperature was 31F (-6C).
7. Before he became Titanic's captain, E. J. Smith was involved in another serious collision at sea as the captain of Titanic's sister ship, Olympic.
8. There really was a J. Dawson on board Titanic, but he was not a third class passenger. He worked in the boiler room. And his grave can be found in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
10. 57,000 photographs were taken of the Titanic during the first manned submersible mission.
11. Bernard Fox had a role in two different movies about Titanic: 1958's A Night To Remember and 1997's Titanic.
12. Violet Jessop, a Titanic survivor, also survived accidents/disasters on Titanic's two sister ships.
13. Each link in Titanic's anchor chain weighed 175 pounds.
14. Titanic's funnels were large enough for a locomotive to pass through.
15. Titanic's 4th funnel was a fake. It was used as a vent for the kitchen.
16. David Warner, who played Cal's bodyguard, Spicer Lovejoy, in Cameron's 1997 masterpiece also appeared in SOS Titanic as schoolteacher Lawrence Beesley.
17. The Monopoly board game's cartoon mascot...with top hat and droopy mustache...was modeled after J.P. Morgan...the owner of the White Star Line.
18. Celine Dion's TITANIC theme song, My Heart Will Go On, almost didn't make it into TITANIC movie history. Although he was open to the idea, director Cameron didn't think a theme song would be appropriate for a film such as TITANIC. Score composer James Horner secretly met with Celine Dion to record a rough draft of the hit song. Horner then waited for the appropriate time to present it to Cameron, and after listening to it several times and taking time to think it over, James Cameron agreed to use it during the ending credits, and the rest is history.
2 people like this
4 responses
@mentalward (14691)
• United States
17 Jun 10
I see that this discussion is pretty old but I just ran into it and was fascinated! I knew some of these facts but most are new to me. It's going to make me look into the history of all passengers on any cruise ship I ever get on (if ever) to see if any of them has been involved in multiple other accidents/disasters while on cruise ships. They would obviously be bad luck!
I was born on the anniversary of the day Titanic hit the iceburg so I've naturally been drawn to it. The movie (1997) was awesome and I cried through the entire thing, even though I'm not normally a crier. But, what has me most intrigued is any documentary done about this ship.
Most of what you've posted here, I've never heard before. The part about the novel written 14 years before Titanic's sinking and the striking similarities is kind of spooky.
Thanks for posting this interesting discussion!
@AJ1952Chats (2332)
• Anderson, Indiana
24 Dec 12
That's amazing that, without even looking at your comment before writing mine, that I came up with the same description regarding how prophetic that novel was: spooky
