Free Republic

A newly unearthed photo of the iceberg that may have sank the Titanic has come to light 112 years after the disaster. The black and white image was captured by an undertaker working on the body recovery ship that arrived on the wreck site in the aftermath of the sinking. It is now coming up for sale at Henry Aldridge & Son Auctioneers of Devizes, Wiltshire, for an estimated price of £4,000 to £7,000.

This month marks another anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. For generations, this tragic story has captivated hearts and minds. The loss of the Titanic left a shaken world in disbelief and made people stop and think. I, personally, became deeply intrigued by the Titanic from the moment I learned of the story as a young child. I believe this is one of those rare, historic events that provides a myriad of timeless lessons. The most obvious is the sinfulness of human pride and arrogance…clearly present in almost every aspect of the story.

Eerie banging sounds that briefly gave rescue teams hope of saving the Titan submersible’s crew and passengers have been released. The Titan was destroyed a few hours into a dive to the Titanic shipwreck on 18 June, claiming the lives of OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush, father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

DEVELOPING🚨: Ron DeSantis has asked Bob VanderPlaats, Steve Deace, and Kim Reynolds to go on the campaign trail with him in New Hampshire after results of a Monmouth University poll came out showing him in fifth place.

Florida blogger and Ron DeSantis campaign influencer Chris Nelson was ejected from the Republican primary debate in Simi Valley, California after harassing Kari Lake and other debate guests. In the hours prior to the event, Nelson posted a series of videos to X (formerly Twitter) that show him shouting at Lake and others. In one video, he can be heard ranting about former President Donald Trump – suggesting his supporters intend to make him ‘Emperor of the United States.’Nelson has become a fairly regular figure among the DeSantis campaign’s online trolls, routinely attacking Trump supporters. Sources close to Nelson have...

Ron DeSantis has replaced his campaign manager Generra Peck, in what is the third major reshuffling of his operations, a campaign spokesperson and a person familiar with the move confirmed to POLITICO. Peck will be shifted to a role of chief strategist as part of the new order. Taking her place atop the campaign will be James Uthmeier, who has served as chief of staff in DeSantis’ governor’s office.

OceanGate Expeditions, the embattled tourism company behind the Titan submersible tragedy, is suspending all exploratory and commercial operations — two weeks after its signature diving vessel fatally malfunctioned with five people on board. The announcement was made quietly through a small banner header on OceanGate’s website. Founded in 2009, the company offered well-heeled daredevils the opportunity to travel on submersibles to underwater shipwrecks and canyons. The Washington state-based group, however, made headlines last month when its Titan submersible vanished June 18 in the North Atlantic Ocean en route to the wreck of the Titanic, sparking a massive, multi-day search effort...

In a 2017 video posted to his company’s YouTube channel, OceanGate Expeditions’ CEO Stockton Rush, who perished along with four passengers on the ill-fated Titan submersible in mid-June, described the glue holding the vessel together by comparing it to a popular food. The 2017 video showed the submersible being put together as Rush asserted, “It’s pretty simple, but if we mess it up, there’s not a lot of room for recovery,” Then he added, “The glue’s very thick, so it’s not like Elmer’s Glue; it’s like peanut butter.” Rush had been warned years before the tragedy that his vessel was...

A man who was once a passenger on the doomed Titan submersible has claimed that OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush suggested the crew sleep on the vessel overnight while they were stuck at the bottom of the Atlantic. Jaden Pan's 2021 expedition took a terrifying turn when the Titan's battery died just over two hours into its descent to the Titanic wreck on the ocean floor. Speaking to the BBC last year, the videographer recalled the moment Rush told the passengers that the battery had gone 'kaput.' Rush reportedly told passengers they needed to go back to the surface when they...

Screenshots of what purports to be the Titan submersible’s final communications before its tragic destruction have gone viral online. The unconfirmed script alleges to reveal the final words shared between someone on board the sub – presumably OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush – and the team on board its mothership the Polar Prince. The document has raised a number of concerns, most notably by suggesting that passengers were aware of issues with the vessel some 18 minutes before its devastating implosion.

David Lochridge, a submersible pilot and engineer who had served in Great Britain’s Royal Navy and worked all over the world, had expressed reservations about the design and build of OceanGate’s submersible, but his concerns were reportedly dismissed. He found numerous problems with the vessel, including the carbon-fiber hull having “very visible signs of delamination and porosity,” the glue for ballast bags coming off, sealing faces with errant plunge holes, and O-ring grooves whose design was not standard, among many others, The New Yorker reported. When Lochridge brought up his concerns at a company meeting, he was fired.

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush said in an old interview that he preferred not to hire veteran submarine pilots or technicians to keep his team "younger" and "inspirational." Rush, who died in June on board his submersible, the Titan, was speaking with executives from Teledyne Marine, a marine-equipment manufacturer. While the interview was undated, a recording of the video meeting was published by Teledyne in August 2020, according to metadata seen by Insider. The recording has been deleted, but Insider reviewed an archived version. In the video, the Teledyne executive Matt Burdyny told Rush that he accompanied OceanGate on a submersible...

Human remains have been found in the wreckage of the Titan submersible on Wednesday, the Coast Guard announced. This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Debris from the Titan submersible that imploded on the bottom of the Atlantic as it tried to reach the wreckage of the Titanic has been hauled ashore. The huge chunks of metal were unloaded from the Horizon Arctic ship at the Canadian Coast Guard pier in St John's, Newfoundland, Canada, this morning. They were quickly covered in large tarpaulins before being lifted by cranes on to trucks that took them away for assessment. It comes exactly ten days after the doomed Titan submersible vanished during a tourist trip run by OceanGate Expeditions. Last Thursday it was revealed that the sub...

A ship carrying pieces of debris from the submersible that officials say imploded while carrying five people to the wreckage of the Titanic last week arrived in Newfoundland, Canada, on Wednesday.

Jewish billionaire Jay Bloom says he and his son Sean were offered two seats on the ill-fated Titan submersible but declined to join over safety concerns and scheduling issues. The American real estate developer, who is based in Las Vegas, said Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman ended up taking their available seats. Dawood and his son were among the five people who died instantly when the submersible imploded on a mission to explore the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic. “Every time I see a picture of that Pakistani businessman and his 19-year-old son, I...

An old clip from the Discovery Channel show “MythBusters” demonstrating how a deep-sea explorer could implode in a depressurized diving suit has gone viral after the Titanic sub disaster. The 2009 clip has racked up more than three-quarters of a million views after being posted Thursday, when it was discovered that the five passengers had died aboard a Titanic wreckage-bound submersible that imploded. In the show’s science experiment, a human-shaped mannequin was recreated from pig parts including bones, muscle, fat, skin and guts. It was then sunk about 300 feet underwater — where pressure is roughly nine times greater than...

The OceanGate submersible disaster is over. The Titan seacraft that supposedly could submerge to depths to view the Titanic wreck imploded, killing all five members onboard. It disappeared on Sunday, June 18, leading to a days-long search by US Coast Guard and Canadian military units to find the craft. On June 20, there was some hope, as noises were heard in the vicinity where the submersible disappeared. It was false hope; the noises were natural in origin. On June 22, it was concluded that there were no survivors when a debris field 1,600 feet from the wreck's bow was discovered,...

The one-of-a-kind Titan submersible that imploded on its descent to the site of the Titanic this week, killing all five passengers, was made with experimental materials, including carbon fiber, which experts say has not been pressure-tested over time in such extreme depths. Since the fatal dive, the innovation behind the Titan and OceanGate Expeditions — the company that owned and operated the vessel for paid tours to the Titanic — has come under increased and intense scrutiny. Days after the Titan was reported missing, sparking a frantic search, the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday that the 22-foot craft imploded, though...

The title of this article is rather broad and audacious, so let’s do what all good engineers would do and set the boundary conditions for the analysis. All calculations will be approximate given the time invested in this analysis and the purpose thereto. Some assumptions and engineering judgments will be made due to the lack of independently verified information and data. This analysis is meant to be brief and the intended audience is both engineers and non-engineers (for educational purposes). Why am I writing this – out of some sort of ghoulish focus on death? Well, engineers study the ghoulish...