RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner built to serve White Star Line. The ship was designed to carry people across the busy ocean route between Europe and North America and was built by Harland and Wolff at its Belfast shipyard. Titanic was one of the largest objects built in the world, at nearly 882 feet long and capable of carrying more than 2,200 passengers and crew. She was intended to be a luxurious and advanced ship and included many modern features such as a wide range of public rooms for passengers, a swimming bath, squash court, electric elevators, and advanced engineering features. Titanic began her maiden voyage on April 10, 1912, leaving Southampton, England, on a route that included two ports of call before arriving in New York City: First, the ship left England for the city of Cherbourg in France, and then stopped at Queenstown, Ireland, known today as Cobh, Ireland. Titanic left for the Atlantic crossing the following day with passengers on board that included some of the richest people in the world at that time, emigrants, engineers, sailors, musicians and officers. These varied groups of people combined to make the RMS Titanic a snapshot of the society of 1912. Late in the night of April 14, 1912, Titanic hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic. The ship’s starboard side was struck by the iceberg and she developed holes that were below the waterline of the ship and in the ship’s watertight compartments. The ship could not stay afloat after too many of her watertight compartments flooded, and she was going to sink. As the ship began to take on water and sink further, she began launching her lifeboats; however, not enough boats were built to accommodate the number of people on board, according to a calculation based on the ship’s size and not the total number of people a ship could carry. As people rushed to the lifeboats, not all of them were fully utilized. Early in the morning of April 15, 1912, Titanic sank with more than 1,500 people dying in the cold ocean water. One of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history occurred, and the ship RMS Carpathia reached the site several hours later and rescued more than 700 survivors. The news of the sinking reached other locations around the world, and the people there began mourning the losses and looking for the cause of the sinking of the ship. The people who died on Titanic and their families were covered in the news around the world and the stories of their voyage soon became well-known and a part of the public memory. Titanic remains important today because of what happened on her and the effects it had on her world, both on the ship and in the rest of the world. There were inquiries held by the British and Americans on how it happened on Titanic and what went wrong with the crew to cause this disaster, and they focused on why the ship sank, including how fast the ship was traveling, the lack of radio use on the ship for long periods of time, the lack of lifeboats on board, and how the crew was trained for such a situation. These inquiries were followed by new regulations in both countries and in many shipping companies to improve the safety and preparedness of future ships, including how many lifeboats ships should have to accommodate the number of people on board, how well crews should monitor and use radio transmissions, and how crews would be instructed to find icebergs in the North Atlantic. In 1985, Titanic was found in its resting place by Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel. The ship was found approximately 12,500 feet in depth. Since then, the ship has been preserved through the efforts of explorers and researchers who have tried to understand and learn from what happened to the ship on her fated voyage. Titanic was an event that happened between man and nature and the outcome was tragic, but in spite of the ship’s destruction and death toll, Titanic is still an example of human creativity in the early 20th century and of the human need to learn from what happened. The story of Titanic can be heard and learned from today in museums, books, and documentaries.