The superluxurious British ocean liner Titanic took two hours and 40 minutes to sink after it hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage on 14 April, 1912, taking 1,517 passengers down with her. At the time, she was the largest passenger steamship in the world. The media frenzy about Titanic's famous victims, the legends about what happened on board the ship, the resulting changes to maritime law, and the discovery of the wreck in 1985 by a team led by Robert Ballard have made Titanic persistently famous in the years since. __