Wikipedia:Today's featured article/June 29, 2005



RMS Titanic was the second of a trio of superliners intended to dominate the transatlantic travel business. Owned by the White Star Line and built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard, Titanic was the largest passenger steamship in the world at the time of its launching. During its maiden voyage, it struck an iceberg at 11:40 (ship's time) on the evening of Sunday, April 14, 1912, and sank two hours and forty minutes later. The sinking resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people, ranking it as one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history and, by far, the most famous. The Titanic used some of the most advanced technology available at the time and was popularly believed to be "unsinkable": it came as a great shock to many people that despite its advanced technology and experienced crew, the Titanic still sank with a great loss of life. The media frenzy about Titanic 's famous victims, the legends about what happened on board the ship, the resulting changes to maritime law, the discovery of the wreck in 1985 by a team led by Robert Ballard, and the international success of James Cameron's Titanic film, have made Titanic persistently famous in the years since.

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