Titanic Ship

A safe and a satchel raised from the wreck of the Titanic were opened on live television Wednesday, yielding soggy bank notes, coins and jewelry, including a gold pendant with a small diamond and the inscription, "May This Be Your Lucky Star." The two objects were taken out of a large debris field left between the two pieces of the severed ship, which sank 75 years ago and still lies at the bottom of the Atlantic.

More bad luck for the Titanic almost a century after its sinking. This time a necklace worn by a passenger was stolen from an exhibit hall Saturday morning inCopenhagen's Tivoli park from the traveling show "Titanic, the Exhibition," according to media reports . The show opened in April and is set to run until Dec. 30. (Don't confuse this necklace with the eye-popping purported blue diamond necklace Kate Winslet wore in the 1997 movie "Titanic....

Walter Lord was into the Titanic before he was born. His grandfather, a Baltimore business baron with steel, railroad and shipping interests, was a friend of the ship's captain, Edward J. Smith, and sent Lord's mother to sea once under Smith's care to make up her mind about a marriage proposal. "I don't remember whether it was my father's proposal or somebody else's," Lord mused not long ago, the summer sun heliographing off his eyeglasses like an SOS.

The discovery of two large pieces of the Titanic's hull on the ocean floor indicates that the fabled luxury liner sank faster than previously thought, researchers said in Falmouth. The hull pieces were a crucial part of the ship's structure and make up a bottom section of the vessel that was missing when the wreck was first located in 1985, the researchers said. After the bottom section of the hull broke free, the bow and stern split, said Roger Long, a naval architect who analyzed the find.

Dozens of relics from the Titanic were auctioned for more than $150,000 in Brookline, including a gold pocket watch owned by an Irish immigrant that stopped ticking the day the ship sank. The watch, once owned by Nora Keane of County Limerick, Ireland, was sold for $24,675, more than three times its estimated value, said Jon Baddeley, Bonhams & Butterfields auction house's marine collectibles expert. Keane survived the sinking.

Cecil and Pat Gates' scale-model replica of the Titanic may not be pretty to look at on land, but who ever said obsessions had to be pretty? Besides, Cecil Gates says his Titanic is best viewed from a distance, dismissing suggestions that he tried to capture the opulence and beauty of the original. "They are designed to look real from 50 feet," said Gates, like his wife a retired Los Angeles schoolteacher who now lives in Northern California.

Four years after the release of his blockbuster epic, James Cameron is returning to the Titanic--literally. The Oscar-winning director of the all-time box-office champion has been in the North Atlantic, diving from the Russian research vessel Keldysh to the wreckage of the Titanic once again. This time, he's collecting footage for a 3-D, Imax-style documentary titled "Ghosts of the Abyss."

Nineteen years after discovering the Titanic, underwater explorer Robert Ballard announced he was returning to the luxury liner to document its deterioration, and to push for international backing to preserve it and other shipwrecks as permanent memorials.

A New York salvage company has been granted exclusive salvage rights to the wreck of the Titanic by a federal court that rejected a challenge by a California television producer. But the U.S. district court in Norfolk, Va., ordered RMS Titanic Inc. to make artifacts available for public exhibition.

A U.S. company that has the rights to salvage and display artifacts from the Titanic said it has asked the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that bans it from selling items recovered from the sunken ship. RMS Titanic Inc., based in Atlanta, argues that a federal appeals court was wrong when it ruled in April that the company did not have proper title to the 6,000 items it salvaged from the vessel.

Dozens of relics from the Titanic were auctioned for more than $150,000 in Brookline, including a gold pocket watch owned by an Irish immigrant that stopped ticking the day the ship sank. The watch, once owned by Nora Keane of County Limerick, Ireland, was sold for $24,675, more than three times its estimated value, said Jon Baddeley, Bonhams & Butterfields auction house's marine collectibles expert. Keane survived the sinking.

The United States signed a treaty Friday with Great Britain to protect the undersea wreckage of the Titanic from damage and looting, the State Department said. The treaty, which Britain signed in November, still requires approval from Congress. The treaty would set up regulations to control visits to the site, John Turner, assistant secretary of state, said in a telephone conference call.

If a penny saved is a penny earned, you can earn yourself a cool $30,000 today. That's been the going price to plunge 12,000 feet to the North Atlantic seabed for a glimpse of the Titanic through the peephole of a cramped submersible. But at 6 p.m. today, you can get a good look at the RMS Titanic on live TV. You won't have to leave the house. And it won't cost you a cent. Airing on the National Geographic Channel (and repeating at 9 p.m.

Explorer Robert Ballard, who found the wreck of the Titanic 19 years ago, has returned to the North Atlantic site to find out why the luxury liner is decaying faster than expected. Researchers said they have noticed that many of the Titanic's structures have collapsed and many items seen years ago are gone.

Nineteen years after discovering the Titanic, underwater explorer Robert Ballard announced he was returning to the luxury liner to document its deterioration, and to push for international backing to preserve it and other shipwrecks as permanent memorials.

It has taken 90 years, the latest in DNA technology and a television documentary to do it, but the "Unknown Child" from the Titanic has finally been identified. The crew of the Canadian recovery ship Mackay-Bennett found the body of the young, fair-haired boy a few days after the steamer sank, killing more than 1,500 people.

When the mighty Titanic slammed into an iceberg on its maiden voyage and sank in the North Atlantic in 1912, drowning about 1,500 passengers and crew members, its remains inspired countless legends of a priceless treasure. Now 80 years later, France is trying to find the rightful owners of some 15,000 objects including jewels and gowns dredged up from a murky depth of 13,000 feet.

The controversial loss of the Titanic has fascinated generations of Britons and Americans: The "unsinkable" luxury liner with its famous passengers sank on its maiden voyage in 1912 after ramming an iceberg in the Atlantic. Controversial aspects of the sinking of the world's largest ship, sailing from Southampton, England, to New York, have often been recounted; more than 1,500 lives were lost and the actions of senior officers were criticized.

A U.S. company that has the rights to salvage and display artifacts from the Titanic said it has asked the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that bans it from selling items recovered from the sunken ship. RMS Titanic Inc., based in Atlanta, argues that a federal appeals court was wrong when it ruled in April that the company did not have proper title to the 6,000 items it salvaged from the vessel.

Four years after the release of his blockbuster epic, James Cameron is returning to the Titanic--literally. The Oscar-winning director of the all-time box-office champion has been in the North Atlantic, diving from the Russian research vessel Keldysh to the wreckage of the Titanic once again. This time, he's collecting footage for a 3-D, Imax-style documentary titled "Ghosts of the Abyss."