Titanic wreckage discovery marks historical September 1 anniversary

On September 1, 1985, a joint U.S.-French expedition discovered the wreckage of the Titanic on the Atlantic Ocean floor, approximately 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.

Other significant historical events occurring on this date include the death of King Louis XIV of France in 1715, the acquittal of Aaron Burr in 1807, and the opening of Boston’s subway system in 1897. The date also marks the extinction of the passenger pigeon in 1914, the devastating 1923 earthquake in Tokyo and Yokohama, and the 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland which initiated World War II.

Additional notable occurrences include the publication of Ernest Hemingway’s ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ in 1952, the rise of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya in 1969, Bobby Fischer’s chess championship win in 1972, the 1983 shoot-down of a Korean Air Lines flight by a Soviet fighter jet, and the 2004 terrorist siege of a school in Beslan, Russia.