His body was not recovered. He left behind a wife and daughter. A statue of him stands in Beacon Park in Lichfield, Staffordshire, in England.

Despite this incident, the White Star Line appointed Smith captain of its newest ship, the Titanic, for its maiden voyage.

Smith was captain of the Olympic, a ship as big as the Titanic, in September 1911, when the Olympic collided with another ship, the Hawke, resulting in the Hawke's losing its prow and the Olympic's losing one of its giant propeller shafts. Smith and the Olympic got the blame for this incident.

Smith did not survive the sinking of the Titanic. Various accounts of his last actions have him jumping into the sea at the last second, standing in the wheelhouse as the ship went down, and even rescuing a child as his final act.

He was captain of the Baltic when it sailed from Liverpool to New York in June 1904 and of the Adriatic when it made a similar voyage three years later.

including a stint transporting British troops to the Boer War.

James Cameron, director of the film Titanic, recently became the first person to reach to travel solo to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The Mariana Trench is the deepest part of the oceans, 11km beneath the surface. With deep-sea science advancing even further, where will we go next?

The US Navy asked Ballard to find and photograph two sunken submarines in the Atlantic on a secret mission.

Scientists and explorers competed to find the Titanic.

People had been searching for the Titanic since it sank in 1912. It was the most famous ship of all time and explorers were desperate to find it.

Imagine looking for something tiny, like an earring, on a football pitch in total darkness. That's a bit like looking for the wreck of the Titanic in the middle of the huge Atlantic Ocean.

Why was the Titanic so famous? It was the biggest ship in the world. When it was built, people said it was unsinkable. On its first voyage, the Titanic sailed for just 4 days before it hit an iceberg and sank. Over 1,500 people lost their lives.

Other investigations of the Titanic disaster found that even when incentives to pursue your own interests were really high – that you may die if you don’t – people can cooperate and act at the expense of their own survival. This is in contrast to models that economists have of human behaviour, that people are self-interested and act to maximise their own well-being. We wanted to test these models in extreme situations by analysing a completely new set of shipwrecks. We found that most shipwrecks are the complete opposite to what happened on the Titanic. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('mpu-mid-article-marketing'); });

The Titanic has been so extensively studied and it confirmed the myth. There was little empirical evidence against it. Lucy Delap of Cambridge University argues that this myth was spread by the British elite to prevent women obtaining suffrage. They said, look at the Titanic, there is no reason to give women the vote because men, even when facing death, will put the interests of women first.

Yes. It really is every man for himself.

It appears to have started when the HMS Birkenhead ran aground off South Africa in 1852, but the notion became widespread after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The captain explicitly issued an order for women and children to be saved first. As a result, the survival rate for women was three times higher than for men.

We went through a list of over 100 major maritime disasters spanning three centuries to see if we could find data on survival rates of men and women. We ended up with data on 18 shipwrecks, involving 15,000 passengers. In contrast to the Titanic, we found that the survival rate for men is basically double that for women. We only have data on children for a limited number of shipwrecks, but it is evident that they have really bad survival prospects: just 15 per cent.

Forget “women and children first” – it might have worked on the Titanic, but it’s usually every man for himself, says Mikael Elinder

In the 15th century, Europeans began to sail west across the Atlantic Ocean in search of new routes to China and the East, but in the process they discovered an entirely New World: North and South America, plus many other lands.

After a few test voyages, the Titanic set off on its maiden voyage, calling at Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland, before making the turn west toward the United States. It never returned.

After a few test voyages, the Titanic set off on its maiden voyage, calling at Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland, before making the turn west toward the United States. It never returned.

A Deck and B Deck were reserved for First Class passengers, although the Second Class smoking room were also on this deck.

The 11 decks could house nearly 2,500 passengers and nearly 900 crew.

The Titanic was one of three Olympic-class ocean liners built by the White Star Line in the early 20th Century. The other two Olympic-class ships were the Britannic, sunk by a German mine in 1916, and Olympic, which served out many years of passenger transport before being retired in 1935.

some people still think that funding NASA is a waste of money.

We’ve barely scratched the surface of the solar system–there are so many more questions, and many more questions we don’t even know we have. The price of understanding is small, and for people around the globe to feel connected over a rocket launch, a rover landing, a photo, or a spacewalk is priceless. Let’s not stop. Let’s keep pushing forward and as NASA says, let’s continue to “dare mighty things.”

Next on the horizon for NASA’s space exploration agenda is a flyby of Europa. The mission to Jupiter’s icy moon has created a lot of excitement for astrobiologists. Because Europa has more water in its oceans than all of the water combined on Earth, it has the potential to harbor life.

NASA has made a little bit of money go a long way. In addition to organizing science missions, the space agency employs over 60,000 people including private organizations.

That money gets spread out over many different projects. So even though the Curiosity rover had an astounding $2.6 billion price tag, each citizen only paid about about $0.41 per year to put the SUV-sized robot on Mars.

Since the end of the Apollo program in 1972 NASA has operated with an average 0.5 percent of the total US budget. That’s not even a percent of the total 3 trillion dollars allocated to the U.S. in 2014. Although that may still seem like a lot of money, let’s compare it to the beginning of the Apollo program.

Getting inspired by science and discovery is one of the most rewarding parts of being a human. But exploring isn’t free, especially not in the space case. What is the price of awe and amazement?

Always the underdog of the solar system, and discovered only in 1930, we never really knew what Pluto looked like; it is 3 billion miles away, after all.

After the Apollo 8 mission sent back the famous “Earthrise” image, we were able to see ourselves for the first time. There we were, a beautiful blue ball, where everyone lives.

Eisenhower said this about the new program: “There are many aspects of space and space technology which can be helpful to all people as the United States proceeds with its peaceful program of space and exploration. Every person has the opportunity to share through understanding in the adventures which lie ahead.”

We’ve successfully put laboratories onto the surface of Mars, and we’ve flown by every single planet in our solar system, including the recently promoted asteroid-turned-dwarf planet, Ceres.

Through this groundbreaking new evidence, it becomes strikingly clear that there is still so much to learn about Titanic and her tragic maiden voyage. Like so many others, I know for a fact that I will forever be completely intrigued by every aspect of her story. As more new evidence and theories are revealed about the sinking of the Titanic, future generations are ensured to be informed about this impactful event in history.

It is believed that the fire started as a result of the heat generated by the coal, and, due to the amount of coal that was being contained on the ship, the fire was extremely hard to control.

She sank about two and a half hours later, lacking enough lifeboats for everyone onboard because of her “unsinkable” status, ultimately claiming more than 1,500 lives.

Of course, I tuned in, and to say that I thought what they found was interesting would be an understatement.