On 1 September 1985 the American oceanographer Robert Ballard and the French scientist Jean-Louis Michel, with the research ship Knorr and the towed camera system Argo, found the wreck of the Titanic at a depth of 3,800 metres, about 650 km south-east of Newfoundland, after a search that had started with a secret US Navy mission to find sunken nuclear submarines. The ship lay in two pieces, 600 metres apart: the bow section upright, the stern shattered. Ballard asked that the site should be left undisturbed as a memorial, but salvage expeditions have since recovered thousands of objects.
Before and after
- 30 June 1985Birth of Michael Phelps
- 2 July 1985Launch of Giotto
- 13 July 1985Live Aid
- 31 August 1985Birth of Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud
- 1 September 1985The wreck of the Titanic is found
- 9 September 1985Birth of Luka Modrić
- 13 September 1985Release of Super Mario Bros.
- 30 September 1985Release of Microsoft Excel
- 3 October 1985First flight of Atlantis
More in Exploration & discovery
- 2 March 1958The Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the crossing
- 27 March 1968Death of Yuri Gagarin
- 14 November 1971Mariner 9 becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet
- 4 July 1997Mars Pathfinder and the Sojourner rover
- 11 January 2008Death of Edmund Hillary
- 25 August 2012Death of Neil Armstrong
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.