You may have gotten over the shock of discovering that the sinking of the Titanic was a real historical event. Now brace yourselves: not everything that the movies tell you about it is accurate. Some of what people think to be true about the Titanic isn't at all, such as that the owners claimed that the ship was unsinkable:

But this is perhaps the biggest myth surrounding the Titanic, says Richard Howells, from Kings College London.

"It is not true that everyone thought this. It's a retrospective myth, and it makes a better story. If a man in his pride builds an unsinkable ship like Prometheus stealing the fire from the gods... it makes perfect mythical sense that God would be so angry at such an affront that he would sink the ship on its maiden outing."

Contrary to the popular interpretation the White Star Line never made any substantive claims that the Titanic was unsinkable - and nobody really talked about the ship's unsinkability until after the event, argues Howells.

Link -via Joe Carter | Image: Paramount