Remember that part in Titanic when everyone was freaking out on the top deck, and they made the violinists play a few songs to calm everyone down? Yeah, well that actually happened, and one of those violins was just sold on auction. Wallace Hartley, the band leader who died along with 1,517 others as the ship went down, apparently last played the hymn ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ on the now-famous violin as the ship was going down.

In an auction of Titanic memorabilia, bidding for the violin opened at £50, but after just a few minutes the bid had shot up to well over £100,000. Now imagine one of the classic auction scenes you’ve seen in films, where two telephone-buyers, go head-to-head in a bid to nab the item. That’s what happened.

The two telephone-buyers bid continuously for quite some time, until one buyer, believed to be English, scooped the violin from his rival for a cool £900,000.

Some people doubt whether the violin is the genuine article – claiming that there was no way it could have survived the salt water and pressure. But the scientists who authenticated the instrument claim that it is the real deal, and even still has some salt in the wood.

But, others claim the violin survived because it was in a leather case that was strapped to the lead-musicians body, and that it was returned to the man’s fiancee – who passed it on to the salvation army when she died.

Either way, someone is really stoked with their new, crusty old violin.

[Source : BBC News]