8 Facts About the Titanic That Are Too Astonishing to Be Real

The Titanic is one of the most famous ships in history. And while most people know that it sank on its first voyage, there are many more facts about this ship that aren’t as well known. Here are 8 facts about the Titanic that not many people know.

1. Third-class passengers shared 2 bathtubs.

Although the third-class passengers on the Titanic had better accommodations than other ships, conditions were still extraordinarily crowded and bare. According to ABC News, between 700 and 1,000 third-class passengers shared just 2 bathtubs.

2. The cheese from the Titanic is still edible.

When the Titanic wreckage was discovered, most of the food that had sunk with it years earlier had disintegrated. But according to Holger W. Jannasch, some cheese might have been lurking in the pantry all along.

“Some foodstuffs, such as cheese, are protected from decay by the very microbial activity that starts the degradation process. If kept in boxes, it may have changed little over the extended time period,” Jannasch wrote. “The microbes that turn milk or whey into cheese produce either highly acidic or highly alkaline conditions, both of which protect these highly proteinaceous foodstuffs from further spoiling.”

3. Game of Thrones was filmed in the same studio where the Titanic was built.

The RMS Titanic, the real ship, was built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland. And Game of Thrones television series was primarily filmed at various locations in Northern Ireland, including the Paint Hall Studios in Belfast, a former shipyard and industrial complex repurposed as a television and film production facility.

4. The story of the Navratil brothers

Michel and Edmond Navratil are brothers who their father kidnaped. He put them on the Titanic to start a new life in America without their mother. Despite the tragic fate of the ship, the brothers, who were only 2 and 4 years old at the time, were among the survivors. Their mother saw their picture in a newspaper and was reunited with her sons.

The 2 boys were the only unaccompanied children rescued from the famous ship.

5. The story of Violet Constance Jessop

Violet Constance Jessop was an ocean liner stewardess and a nurse. She survived not one but 2 sinkings. First, she endured the sinking of the Titanic. Second, she also lived through Britannic’s destruction under similar circumstances. Violet narrowly avoided death when the RMS Olympic collided with the HMS Hawke’s naval vessel in 1911.

6. 2 books seemingly predicted the Titanic tragedy.

Years before the Titanic sank, 2 mysterious books were published that seemed to predict the disaster.

The first book, How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic, by a Survivor, was written in 1886 by W.T. Stead, a prominent spiritualist and investigative journalist. The story is about an ocean liner that hits an iceberg and sinks with the loss of many lives.

The second book, Futility or the Wreck of the Titan, by Thomas Andrews, was published in 1912, just months before the Titanic’s maiden voyage.

Both books eerily share many similarities with the real-life sinking of the Titanic, including the ship’s name, size, the lack of lifeboats, and the cause of the disaster (hitting an iceberg). The coincidence of these 2 books has led many to believe that they may have been a form of premonition or prophecy.

7. Only one could survive.

James Cameron, the mastermind behind the 1997 blockbuster hit, Titanic, has restated all debates with his latest revelation. After decades of fans debating whether or not Jack and Rose could have both fit on that door, Cameron conducted a scientific study and concluded that “only one could survive” during the iconic door scene.

“We took 2 stunt people who were the same body mass of Kate and Leo, and we put sensors all over them and inside them, and we put them in ice water, and we tested to see whether they could have survived through a variety of methods and the answer was, there was no way they both could have survived. Only one could survive,” he explained.

8. There will be a Titanic II, but it’s still on hold.

Titanic II is a replica of the famous ship. Australian businessman Clive Palmer and his company, Blue Star Line, were building it. The ship was set to make the transatlantic crossing that the original never completed. The trip was supposed to be made in 2022; however, the project appears to be on hold.

What would you do if given a first-class ticket for a cruise on Titanic II?