We all know the story of the RMS Titanic — the British passenger liner that tragically sank after colliding with an iceberg on its maiden voyage, causing the deaths of 1,500 people — but there’s something about this story that you probably don’t know.
More baffling than the fact that James Cameron’s famous movie Titanic beat out Good Will Hunting for the Oscar that year is the book that was written about the ship sinking…14 years before it actually happened.
Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan was written in 1898 by Morgan Robertson. It tells the story of a fictitious ocean liner called the Titan that is said to be "unsinkable."
Halfway through its voyage in the North Atlantic, the ship hits an iceberg, and there are not enough lifeboats for all of the passengers.
It doesn't say anything about how buoyant the ship's doors are, however.
Here's where it gets insane. In Futility, the boat hits the iceberg on the starboard side on an April night, 400 miles away from Newfoundland. The real Titanic hit an iceberg on the STARBOARD side on APRIL 14, 400 miles from Newfoundland.
What's going on here?
When the Titanic sank, people understandably accused Robertson of clairvoyance, but Robertson insisted that he just knew a ton about maritime practices and shipbuilding, and that any similarities between the tragedy and his story were pure coincidence.
