(AP) – A bronze statue from the Titanic — not seen in decades
and feared to be lost for good — is among the discoveries
made by the company with salvage rights to the wreck site
on its first expedition there in many years.

RMS Titanic Inc., a Georgia-based company that holds the
legal rights to the 112-year-old wreck, has completed its
first trip since 2010 and released images from the expedition
on Monday. The pictures show a site that continues to change
more than a century later.

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)

    
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963)

In the early hours of August 2, 1943, a Japanese destroyer
rammed an American PT (patrol torpedo) boat, No. 109,
slicing it in two. The destruction is so massive other
American PT boats in the area assume the crew is dead.

Two crewmen were, in fact, killed, but 11 survived, including
Lt. John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy’s actions in saving his surviving crew after PT-109
was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer earned him
several commendations and made him a war hero.

A torpedo from John F. Kennedy’s PT-109 rests some 1,200
feet (360 meters) underwater in the Solomon Islands. Key
details from the torpedo and its nearby launching tube
helped identify this wreck site as that of the World War II
boat.

 
ED DANAHUE

1982

Arnold Schwarzenegger was nicknamed the "Austrian Oak"
in his bodybuilding days, "Arnie" or "Schwarzy" during his
acting career, and "the Governator" (a portmanteau of
"Governor" and "Terminator") during his political career.
He’s 77 years old today.

1984

Bismarck firing at HMS Prince of Wales.

On May 24, 1941, Germany’s largest and most modern of Germany’s 
battleships battleship, the Bismarck, sank the pride of the British
fleet, HMS Hood.

Less than 10 minutes after the British opened fire, a shell from 
Bismarck struck Hood near her aft ammunition magazines.

Soon afterwards, Hood exploded and sank within three minutes,
with the loss of all but three of her crew. Prince of Wales
continued to exchange fire with Bismarck but suffered serious malfunctions in her main armament.