Seventy-three years after it sank to the North Atlantic ocean
floor, a joint U.S.-French expedition locates the wreck of the
RMS Titanic. The sunken liner was about 400 miles east of
Newfoundland in the North Atlantic, some 13,000 feet below
the surface.

Efforts to locate and salvage the Titanic began almost
immediately after it sank. But technical limitations—as
well as the sheer vastness of the North Atlantic search
area—made it extremely difficult.

American oceanographer and former Navy officer Robert D.
Ballard, who was based out of the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution in Massachusetts, led his first search expedition
in 1977, which was unsuccessful.

Ballard also discovered the wreck of John F. Kennedy‘s
PT-109 in 2002.

Robert Duane Ballard (82)