Some of the ideas scientists came up with to recover the sunken Titanic from the bottom of the ocean were just bizarre.
On 15th April 1912, the most infamous ship wreck in world history took place, an event which, in the years since it happened, hundreds of conspiracy theories have been conjectured.
And while some of them are quite crazy, I think even some of the scientists' wild theories on how to resurface the doomed vessel could be more so.
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Within months of the Titanic sinking, strategies were laid out on how it could be resurfaced - that was despite a number of survivors explaining that the liner broke in half.
For 73 years, the cruise ship remained at the bottom of the ocean, which put an end to the possibility of seeing it above water ever again.
So, lets get into some of these 'scientists' plans - which for a couple you would be excused if you thought a kindergartener came up with.
The iceberg
This theorist was no scientist, but instead he was an unemployed haulage contractor from the UK.
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In the 1970s Arthur Hickey, of Walsall, England, pitched that in order to ever see the ship in one-piece again, it must be completely covered in ice. So, it would be possible to float it to the surface before towing it to Canada.
He is alleged to have stated that 'if an iceberg could sink the Titanic, why couldn't it un-sink it'.
The idea never came to fruition after it was calculated more than half a million tons of liquid nitrogen would be needed to in order to make it a possibility.
A whole lot of ping pong balls
In the same decade, someone bizarrely came up with the theory that if you took enough ping pong balls to the ship wreck, it would simply float delicately to the top of the North Atlantic Ocean.
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It would have involved hundreds of thousands of ping pong balls.
The idea was soon rubbished after somebody pointed out the pressure of deep under water would simply crush the balls.
Slather the titanic with Vaseline
Yes, this really was a suggestion - Vaseline works as a dry floatant, but in order to make a ship that weighs 52,310 tons float, you would need 180,000 tons of the stuff.
Balloons and magnets
Two years after it sunk, an architect from Denver, in England, suggested that it could be surfaced with magnets, but it was deemed too expensive. Someone else claimed you could surface it by attaching balloons to magnets.
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Well, all of those ideas are crazy, and maybe it's best if we keep it down there - what's to gain from raising it to the surface anyway?
Topics: Conspiracy Theories, History, Science, Titanic, Weird, Reddit
Joe Yates