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Titanic Shower Curtain | $15.95
Ahoy there! Going down? Do it in style while showering up with this Titanic Shower Curtain designed by Jan Habraken, available at the NeatoShop. Install it in your bathroom and see how many people “get” it. Even if they don’t, it still looks cool! This PVC-free shower curtain is made from 100% EVA, and you can peek out through the portholes. Check it out, as well as the other Titanic items and the other clever and fashionable shower curtains at the NeatoShop!
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SS Jiugang doesn't actually mean "Titanic" in Chinese, but it sure acted like one. The $2.6 million Chinese yacht was launched with much fanfare, but immediately sank like a rock!
But in a horrifying turn of events for the makers, the vessel immediately dropped like a block of concrete as it entered the water, becoming hopelessly submerged in the Yellow River. The ceremony on September 29th was intended to cast the 104-foot (32-meter) houseboat downstream – they just didn't anticipate which form of down the boat would go.
Little known fact, it was not actually an iceberg, but Godzilla that caused the Titanic to sink.
Scientists have taken 3 dimensional photographs of the Titanic’s final resting place, documenting the wreckage like never before in order to gain a better understanding of how and why the ship sank so rapidly. The images were presented in a courtroom in Virginia as part of a salvage claim, and will soon be released for the world to see in the hopes that more answers will be revealed about the mystery of the Titanic.
The greatest, fastest most sophisticated ship created of al time… The Titanic II. What could go wrong? This faux sequel to the James Cameron smash hit was created by The Asylum, a movie production company infamous for making “mockbusters” – movies that blatantly rip off big budget Hollywood hits. Their marketing strategy seems to be hoping to confuse people into watching the wrong movie. However with lines like “Looks like history is repeating itself.” You’ll want to watch it for its epic cheese. Watch full trailer for the actual film at the link.
YouTube user Japanarchist asked his friend Mika to explain the movie Titanic in a minute and a half. I must say that she pretty much NAILED it. Japan Probe has the video clip: Link [embedded YouTube clip]
Comments Off Here is a rare video of the Titanic under construction at the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast. Construction, funded by J.P. Morgan’s International Mercantile Marine Co., began in March, 1909.
Via Open Culture
Everyone should have a personal bucket list. Once in a lifetime events like skydiving or attending the olympics or even visting the Titanic first-hand are all things all of us CAN do… if we so desired. I haven’t done many of the ones on this list (except for Comic-Con, awesome, by the way) but that certainly doesn’t mean I won’t get to them in the future. Check out this great list of 20 Experiences to Have Before you Die and see which ones you can already cross off your own bucket list. Have you tried skydiving?
Sky-diving is the closest we humans will come to taking flight (at least right now)…so why not experience it? Sky-diving schools are located all around the country and provide an exhilarating, and safe, journey into thewild, blue yonder.
Of course, this list is highly subjective. What would you add to it? Link
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
Psycho
Shower Curtain - $15.95
Unless you've got this in awesome bathtub carved from a single slab of quartz, I'm guessing that you're taking showers in a regular ol' bathtub and you probably need a shower curtain every now and then.
May we offer our selection of really neat shower curtains to make your morning shower that much more awesome? From the NeatoShop:
 Jolly Rogers Shower Curtain |
Link: Shower Curtains from the NeatoShop
The key to the binocular case on the bridge of the Titanic was scheduled to be auctioned on Saturday:
It belonged to second officer David Blair, transferred from the ship just before its maiden voyage. But he forgot to hand it to his replacement.
As a result officers had no access to binoculars on the bridge or in the crow’s nest – and 1,517 people perished when the ship hit an iceberg on April 15, 1912.
Link via Digg | Photo: The Express
UPDATE 4/22/10: After receiving a virus complaint, I’ve changed the link.
Both the Titanic and the Lusitania sank, and both lacked enough life boats to shelter everyone on board. But even though the Lusitania sank in 18 minutes and the Titanic sank in 2 hours and 40 minutes, Lusitiana passengers and crew had a higher survival rate. In Smithsonian, Sarah Zielenski explains why:
What happened? The researchers say it all comes down to time.
The passengers of the Lusitania had less than 20 minutes before their ship sank, and in such a life-and-death situation, social scientists say, “self-interested reactions predominate.” It didn’t matter what the captain ordered. The ship was going down and people reacted selfishly, and in such a situation, it would be expected that people in their prime (16 to 35) would be the most likely to win a seat on a lifeboat. In addition, because there were difficulties in launching those boats, people in that age group would have had an additional advantage because they were more likely to have had the strength and agility to stay on board a rocking boat or to climb back in after falling into the water.
The Titanic, though, sank slowly enough for social norms to hold sway. The passengers generally held to the rule of “women and children first” even though they could have easily overpowered the crew. And first- and second-class passengers may have benefited from the extra time in which they may have had earlier or better information from the crew or had other advantages.
Link | Image: NOAA
When Titanic blasted Star Wars off the top of the earnings throne, George Lucas had a congratulations illustration made to honor fellow director, Jim Cameron. See the whole thing at the link. Interestingly, if you look just above Leia, the backwards shadow of the word “television” can be seen, making me wonder if this was actually doodled on the back of some other document.
Now, what will Jim send to himself now that Avatar has sunk Titanic?
By now we all know a little about the Titanic, but HowStuffWorks has a great list of things that were lost on the famous ship, many of which were news to me. Perhaps the most interesting one is some of the lost artworks on the ship:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering the wealth of many of its passengers, the Titanic was carrying a number of works of art, all of which were lost when the ship sank. The most spectacular of these was a jeweled copy of The Rubaiyat, a collection of about 1,000 poems by the 11th-century Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam. The binding of this incredibly luxurious book contained 1,500 precious stones, each set in gold. It had been sold at auction in March 1912 to an American bidder for £405 or around $1,900 — 15 years worth of wages for a junior crew member on the Titanic.
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By now we all know a little about the Titanic, but HowStuffWorks has a great list of things that were lost on the famous ship, many of which were news to me. Perhaps the most interesting one is some of the lost artworks on the ship:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering the wealth of many of its passengers, the Titanic was carrying a number of works of art, all of which were lost when the ship sank. The most spectacular of these was a jeweled copy of The Rubaiyat, a collection of about 1,000 poems by the 11th-century Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam. The binding of this incredibly luxurious book contained 1,500 precious stones, each set in gold. It had been sold at auction in March 1912 to an American bidder for £405 or around $1,900 — 15 years worth of wages for a junior crew member on the Titanic.
Gin & Titonic Ice Tray – $6.45
How do you make sure that your next party is unsinkable? The answer may just be in your drinks.
Just added to the Neatorama Shop’s Christmas Special, where every purchase gets you a free Mystery Bonus. At just $6.45 (the cheapest price on the Net, I might add) it’ll make a great Christmas gift that you can use year round.
Your purchase helps support the blog, thank you! Link | More Fun & Unusual Ice Trays
The following is reprinted
from Uncle
John's Unsinkable Bathroom Reader
Sinking of the Titanic - LIFE
Images
We all know the story of the Titanic - but did you know that
one man survived the disaster only to be condemned for not dying an honorable
death? Here's the story of a lone Japanese onboard of the ill-fated ocean
liner whose survival actually became a curse:
THE LONG TRIP HOME
RMS Titanic - photo via abratis.de
In 1910 Japan's Transportation Ministry sent an official named Masabumi
Hosono to Russia to study that country's railroad system. Hosono finished
his assignment in early 1912 and, following a brief stop in London, began
the next leg of his trip home by embarking across the Atlantic on the
RMS Titanic. Needless to say, that leg of the trip didn't
go quite as planned.
On April 14, at 11:40 p.m., just four days into its maiden voyage, the
Titanic struck an iceberg while traveling near top speed and
began taking on water.
(Photo: Cheddarbay.com)
RUDE AWAKENING
It's doubtful that anyone on the Titanic, which had been advertised
by the White Star Liner as being "practically unsinkable," realized
at first that the ship had suffered a mortal blow. There were plenty of
people on board who didn't even know the ship had hit anything. Many of
those who noticed felt only a slight shudder followed by the sound of
the engines coming to a stop.
 Hosono
apparently slept through the entire thing. The first he learned of it
was shortly after midnight, 25 or 30 minutes after the collision, when
he was awakened by a knock at the door of his second-class cabin and told
to put on his life vest.
Three times when he tried to make his way to the lifeboats, he was turned
away by the ship's officers, who ordered him to return to the lower levels
of the ship. They likely assumed that, as a Japanese person, he must have
been traveling in third class, or "steerage." On his third attempt,
Hosono managed to slip past a guard and make his way to the lifeboats.
IN THE DARK
Was the Titanic sinking, or was it just floating dead on the
water, waiting to be assisted by the ocean liner Carpathia or
one of the half a dozen other ships who'd received her distress calls
and were already steaming to her aid?
We know the answer today, of course, but on that fateful night only three
men on the Titanic did - Edward J. Smith, the captain; Thomas
Andrews, the chief designer; and J. Bruce Ismay, the president of the
White Star Line.
They knew not only that the Titanic would sink, but also that
it would sink well before help arrived. And they kept the information
to themselves, fearing a panic that would cause the passengers to stampede
the lifeboats, which when filled to capacity could carry only 1,178 of
the more than 2,200 people on board.
Even the officers ordered to organize the loading of the lifeboats had
no idea that the Titanic was going down.
THANKS ... BUT NO THANKS
Withholding this information did help to keep the loading of the lifeboats
orderly, but probably at the cost of hundreds of needless deaths. Many
passengers and even many crew members, not suspecting the gravity of the
situation, preferred to remain on board rather than risk climbing into
the lifeboats. If you had booked passengers on a ship that was said to
be unsinkable, would you be willing to leave its warm, dry, and seemingly
safe environs to climb into a tiny, swinging lifeboat in the middle of
the night, and be lowered on pulleys 65 feet straight down into the freezing,
iceberg-filled Atlantic? Even the captain's order to load women and children
first must have cost some passengers their lives, because it meant that
married women were being asked to separate from their husbands, which
many refused to do.
Besides, what was the rush? As far as the crew members loading the boats
knew, the Titanic wasn't sinking. The lifeboats were simply going
to ferry passengers to the rescue ships when they arrived, and that was
still hours away. There would be plenty of time to load more people into
the lifeboats later, if they didn't want to go now. The crew members filled
the boats with as many people as wanted to get in, and then lowered them
into the water. In the end, only three of Titanic's 20 lifeboats
were filled to capacity when they set down in the Atlantic.
Hosono must have sensed what was happening earlier than many of the passengers
did, because as he stood next to Lifeboat No. 10 as it was being loaded,
he was already steeling himself for the end. "I tried to prepare
myself for the last moment with no agitation, making up my mind not to
leave anything disgraceful as a Japanese," he explained in a letter
to his wife. "But still I found myself looking for and waiting for
any possible chance to survive."
That chance came moments later, when the officer loading No. 10 could
not coax any more women or children into the boat. "Room for two
more!" the officer called out. Hosono watched as another man jumped
into the boat.
"I myself was deep in desolate thought that I would no more be able
to see my beloved wife and children, since there was no alternative for
me than to share the same destiny as the Titanic," he wrote.
"But the example of the first man making a jump led me to take this
last chance." Hosono hopped in, and at 1:20 a.m. he and 34 other
people were lowered to safety in a boat built to hold 65.
One of the lifeboats carrying Titanic survivors (Photo: The
National Archives)
FINAL MOMENTS
The Titanic, by now sitting very low in the water, had just
one hour left to live. Eight of the 20 lifeboats had already launched
and only one of them - Hosono's No. 10 - was filled even halfway
to capacity. (Lifeboat No. 1 launched with only 12 passengers out of a
possible 40). Many of the passengers still aboard the Titanic
were just beginning to realize that the "unsinkable" ship might
really be sinking.
When the Titanic finally slipped beneath the waves at 2:20 a.m.,
Hosono watched from Lifeboat No. 10. He described the experience in a
letter to his wife, which he wrote on board the Carpathia as
it brought the survivors to New York. "What had been a tangible,
graceful sight was not reduced to a mere void. And how I thought about
the inevitable vicissitudes of life!"
AFTERMATH
Of the more than 2,200 passengers and crew aboard the Titanic,
just over 700 survived, including 316 of the 425 women and 56 of 109 children.
Even if every woman and child had been accommodated in the lifeboats,
there still would have been enough room for nearly 700 of the 1,690 men,
yet only 338 men survived. Not everyone who perished did so because they
declined an opportunity to climb into a lifeboat, not by a long shot.
But this must surely have been the cause of many deaths.
In the shock and horror that followed one of the worst peace-time disasters
in maritime history, many of these subtle details were lost on newspaper-reading
public. As they counted up the 162 dead women and children, many readers
wondered how 338 men had managed to find their way into the lifeboats,
"displacing" those helpless victims. Hosono received some of
the harshest criticism of all. Not from the American newspapers, who expected
chivalrous self-sacrifice from well-bred gentlemen of the middle and upper
classes, but were dismissive of foreigners and the rabble traveling in
the steerage. Few American papers even took an interest in Hosono's story.
One that did celebrated the good fortune of the "lucky Japanese boy."
SAVED ... AND CONDEMNED
No, the harshest attack against Hosono came from his own countrymen.
For in surviving the Titanic disaster, he had broken two cultural
taboos. Not only had Hosono chosen ignominious life over an honorable
death, he had done so in public - on a European passenger liner
with the eyes of the world upon him.
Hosono was denounced as a coward by Japanese newspapers and fired from
his job with the Transportation Ministry. The ministry hired him back
a few weeks later, but his career never recovered. College professors
denounced him as immoral, and he was written up in Japanese textbooks
as a man who had disgraced his country. There were even public calls for
him to commit hara-kiri - ritual suicide - as means of saving
face.
Hosono never did kill himself, but there must have been times when he
wished he'd died on the Titanic. He never spoke of the experience
again, and forbade any mention of it in his home. After he died in 1939,
a broken and forgotten man, his letter to his wife, written on what is
believed to be the only surviving piece of Titanic stationery,
sat in a drawer until 1997, when the blockbuster film Titanic
staged its Tokyo premiere. Then the Japanese public's interest in the
doomed liner's lone Japanese passenger was renewed again, this time with
much more sympathy. |
|
 |
The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle
John's Unsinkable Bathroom Reader.
The Bathroom Readers' Institute has sailed the seas of science, history,
pop culture, humor, and more to bring you Uncle John's Unsinkable Bathroom
Reader. Our all-new 21st edition is overflowing with over 500 pages of
material that is sure to keep you fully absorbed.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute has published a series of popular
books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure
yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom
Reader Institute.
 |
At the tender age of 9 weeks, Millvina Dean had a brush with history that altered her life forever. Today, the 97-year-old Dean is the oldest living survivor of the Titanic.
Peter Jackson of BBC News has the story:
Millvina Dean was a babe in arms when her family boarded the Titanic. She remembers nothing of the journey, of her rescue, or of her father, who perished when it sank. But it’s an event that has shaped the 97-year-old’s life. [...]
Almost 100 years after it dipped below the waves of the Atlantic, the supposedly unsinkable ocean liner still exerts a powerful hold on our collective imagination. It was heralded as an engineering triumph, yet succumbed to the forces of nature on its maiden voyage. Among the 1,517 who perished were the rich, the poor, and those in between.
The fascination is such that recently an enthusiast wrote to her, offering £100 for a lock of hair. Even she – a veteran of the Titanic convention circuit since 1985 – is somewhat bemused.
“The girls chopped a bit of hair off and put some red ribbon around it and said: ‘that’s the last you’ll hear from him’,” she says, a smile spreading across her face.
“But he sent the cheque. I wrote back to say he’d restored my faith in people’s honesty.”
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by romreader.
Robert Ballard, the explorer who found the wreckage of the Titanic, has just revealed that the expedition was actually a cover story for the US Navy about two lost nuclear submarines:
The Navy was not interested in the Titanic. … I mean, they funded the technology because it had so many military applications. And I was a naval intelligence officer for 30 years, and so I did a lot of missions for the Navy. Many remain classified, my best stuff. Rats …
Yes, the Titanic was a cover for a series of military operations. The Titanic was here, and over here was the Scorpion and over here was the Thresher (as he says this, he arranges three objects on a tabletop, roughly in a line, the center one depicting the Titanic).
And had that not occurred, I probably would not have found the Titanic because they wouldn’t have funded me. I mean, if the Titanic was in the Indian Ocean, it’d probably still be in the Indian Ocean. But … it was straddled by two very interesting subs that we had lost — and the Scorpion was lost on war patrol … and it was carrying nuclear weapons. So it was a very hot sub to the Navy …
