So it’s 100 years today since the launch of the Titanic, in 31st May 2011. Yesterday I went to the Artifacts exhibition, and it fit my melancholic mood on a rainy day…very sad. So today I’ll post more Titanic related photos and videos.

This is William John Stead, famous British investigative journalist who was lost on the Titanic…spookily:

Stead had often claimed that he would die from either lynching or drowning. Stead published two pieces that gained greater significance in light of his fate on the Titanic. On 22 March 1886, he published an article named “How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic, by a Survivor”,where a steamer collides with another ship, with high loss of life due to lack of lifeboats. Stead had added “This is exactly what might take place and will take place if liners are sent to sea short of boats”. In 1892, Stead published a story called From the Old World to the New,  in which a White Star Line vessel, the Majestic, rescues survivors of another ship that collided with an iceberg.

I’ve heard quite a lot of foreshadowing from others too, with ships called Titan or indeed Titanic being mentioned in stories years before the disaster. I have one factette for you – the makers of the ship didn’t proclaim it ‘practically unsinkable’ – the leading shipbuilding magazine at the time did…oops.