Titanic

Forgot to mention that my wife and I went to the Metreon in San Francisco to the Titanic Artifact exhibition. There were real objects recovered from site, plus real stories of the First class, Second Class, and Third class passengers. The lines were long: the line to buy tickets, and the line to enter the exhibit. So we bought the tickets and headed to the food court on the first floor to eat before standing in line to enter the exhibit. After eating a decent lunch and standing in line for about forty minutes, we were finally allowed in the exhibit. We were handed a boarding pass with a name of an actual passenger of the Titanic. I had the boarding pass of Emil Brandais, an American returning from his annual trip to Europe. We were told to look up our names on the passenger lists at the end of the exhibit to find out if we had survive the tragedy. It was interesting to see the mock up of a typical first class bedrooms, or the bunk style rooms for the workers on the ship, or the typical menu for the different classes in the dining rooms, or the re-creation of the grand stairwell.
And there were stories of the passengers, which I think made eerie because there were stories of passengers who were transferred to the Titanic at the last minute for a variety of reasons, stories of passengers who felt something wasn't right with the ship and refused to buy a ticket for the ship (E. Russel had quite a number of trunks of fabrics and clothing she couldn't get insured because the ship was deemed "unsinkable" so she didn't buy a ticket), or the captain of the ship who was going to retire after taking Titanic to New York on its maiden voyage, or the woman employed by the White Star Line, owners of the Titanic, who had constant bad luck with the other ships in the line. It was interesting to see the 30,000 pound section of the ship hull hanging from the ceiling, plus reading the preservation techiques that are required to maintain each and every artifact. It was a good exhibit.
By the way, my passenger didn't make it.