Which famous ship hit an iceberg in 1912?

Titanic struck at 11:40 on the night of 14 April 1912 and was gone in two hours and forty minutes, with about 1,500 of the 2,224 aboard. The lifeboats had capacity for around 1,178 - more than the regulations of the time demanded, which were written by tonnage rather than by the number of people carried, and had not been revised since 1894.

The failure was systemic rather than singular. Ice warnings had been received and not all reached the bridge; the ship was making close to full speed through a known ice field on a moonless, flat-calm night when there was no surf breaking at the base of bergs to give them away; and several early lifeboats left less than half full because officers doubted the davits would hold a full load. The nearest ship, about ten miles off, had shut down its wireless for the night.

The wreck was not found until 1985, at 3,800 metres, by Robert Ballard on a mission whose real purpose was a classified survey of two sunken American nuclear submarines - looking for Titanic was the cover story, and the technique he had developed for following debris trails is what found it. It is now being consumed by iron-eating bacteria, and estimates give the recognisable structure a few more decades.