The RMS Titanic is one of history’s most renowned ships.

It was immortalised in the James Cameron film (Leonardo DiCaprio still hasn’t lived that one down), and in other weird ways, like this replica that someone is building for reasons that we will never fully understand.

The ship went down on April 15, 1912 – 107 years ago.

If you’d like to know what it looks like now, you can watch this video from a recent dive to its final resting place.

Before you do that, though, Business Insider collected a series of facts and stories about the ship and the people on board that make the romance between Jack and Rose look like a side plot.

Here are 10 of the most interesting things you probably didn’t know about the famous ship:

The Ship Was Plagued By Tragedy Long Before It Set Sail

Eight people died during the ship’s construction. That’s eight people dead before it even left the port.

Eight men died during the construction of the ship, but only five of the names are known: Samuel Scott, John Kelly, William Clarke, James Dobbin, and Robert Murphy. A plaque memorialising the eight men in Belfast was unveiled in 2012.

Foreshadowing, much?

Art Imitates Life

Actress Dorothy Gibson, who survived the sinking of the ship, went on to star in a film called Saved From The Titanic which was released just a month after the ship sank.

Upon arriving in New York City unscathed, she immediately began filming “Saved From the Titanic,” the first film to depict the events of the sinking. It was released in May 1912, a month after the crash. She is famous for wearing the same clothes and shoes in the movie as she had worn during the actual sinking.

That’s really dark…

Survivors Regret

Lawrence Beesley, a survivor of the wreck, tried to crash the filming of the 1958 film A Night to Remember because he wanted to symbolically go down with the ship.

According to IMDB, Beesley was on the set of “A Night to Remember,” which is considered the most accurate of all Titanic films. He allegedly tried to jump into the scene depicting the ship’s sinking, in order to symbolically go down with the ship. Legend has it that director Roy Ward Baker refused, as it would have been a union violation and could have halted filming.

He went on to write a memoir about his experience titled The Loss of the SS Titanic.

The Class Politics In The Cameron Film Were Seriously Watered Down

You know those happy dancing people in Titanic? They weren’t as happy in real life.

Even though, by all accounts, the third-class accommodations on the Titanic were much better than those on an average ship, they were still pretty rough. The total amount of third-class passengers ranged from 700 to 1,000, and they all had to share two bathtubs.

That does not sound like a good time.

The News Got It Horribly Wrong

In the race to get a headline out, a lot of the news mistakenly published that there were no fatalities when the ship sank.

The World reported no fatalities, the Daily Mail declared “no lives lost,” and the Belfast Telegraph claimed “no danger of loss of life.”

American newspapers were able to take advantage of the time difference, and their headlines were more accurate. The New York Times, for example, ran the headline “Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg; 866 Rescued by Carpathia, Probably 1,250 Perish; Ismay Safe, Mrs. Astor Maybe, Noted Names Missing.”

There must have been a lot of awkward retractions in the hours that followed.

One Woman, Two Ill-Fated Ships

One woman survived the Titanic and then later survived the sinking of another ship, the Britannic.

Depending on how you look at it, stewardess and nurse Violet Jessop is the luckiest – or unluckiest – woman alive. She survived the sinking of both the Titanic and the Britannic.

Jessop was just 25 when she survived the sinking of the Titanic. She was instructed to get into a lifeboat while the ship was going down to show women that the boats were safe.

Undeterred by this maritime tragedy, Jessop began working on the Britannica (dubbed the Titanic 2 by the media), until it came across a mine that had been planted by a German U-boat in 1916. That ship also sank, and Jessop escaped again, but this time with a serious head injury that would affect her her whole life.

I would have avoided ships for the rest of my life.

Men Dressed As Women To Get A Spot On A Lifeboat

We saw some of this depicted in the film. What you didn’t know is that it broke up a marriage.

Dickinson and Helen Bishop were granted a divorce in 1916, four years after the Titanic went down. Helen claimed that her husband was cruel and a drunk, but their relationship was also plagued by rumours that Dickinson had dressed up as a woman in order to escape the ship. In his official testimony during the US Senate Inquiry regarding the Titanic, he claimed that there had been no official order allowing only women and children to get on lifeboats.

Awkward.

One Of The Most Famous Quotes From Titanic Is Based On A True Story

In the movie, Benjamin Guggenheim refuses a life vest and states “We are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down as gentlemen.”

While it seems almost too cinematic to be true, the real Benjamin Guggenheim was actually prepared to go down like a gentleman, according to multiple reports. A New York Times article published in April 1912 reported that he had asked a steward to tell his wife in New York City “I’ve done my best in doing my duty.”

Bless him.

13 Honeymoons Ended In Tragedy

There were 13 couples celebrating their honeymoons aboard the ship. They really should have handed out free tickets to a 14th couple.

A Nearby Ship Could Have Saved More Lives

The SS Californian is infamous for being close to the Titanic when it went down.

Multiple bad judgment calls led to the Californian not helping the Titanic: the ship’s radio was allegedly shut off for the night when the Titanic hit the iceberg, and when the captain was awakened by the flares the Titanic had been setting off, he assumed that they were just fireworks. By the time the SOS messages finally came through, it was too late.

The Californian sank in November 1915.

For more facts, read the full article here.

[source:businessinsider]