It began in beautiful serene Ireland.  At the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast.  Three thousand men would labor there for two years.  They were building a monster-The largest ship the world had ever seen.  In the spring of 1909, a mammoth mountain of steel began to rise against the sky.  The ship would weigh 66,000 tons.  Her hull would span four city blocks.  Each of her colossal steam engines was the size of a three-story house.  The huge scale of these things was a source of delight and amazement.  It was a scene out of Gulliver's Travels when 20 draft horses were needed to haul the ships over-sized anchor through the quaint, miniature streets of Belfast.  Not a few cautious skeptics found this giant ship threatening or overwhelming and wrote complaining of her nightmarish scale.  But their warnings fell on deaf ears.  For the fate and magnitude of this ship still fascinates the world today.  For her name was a synonym for tragedy and her name was Titanic.

     Longer then 2 football fields, Titanic stood high, proud, and gleaming in the water as a modern skyscraper.  With exquisite furnishings that matched the finest mansions in England, she was a showcase of splendor and luxury.  Laidened with the splendors of the Gilded Age, she was a floating Victorian palace, a technological jewel that experts considered "unsinkable" as well as impressive.  On her maiden voyage, Titanic sailed into the twilight zone of legend.  She would not be seen again for 73 years, but this time her proud, over-bearing magnificence is no longer seen.  Now rusted and decaying, Titanic now lays broken and silent in her dark and eerie watery grave.  The question is, can we learn anything from that cold and chilly night of 90 years ago that could apply to us still today?  Are there any lessons that we might gain that could last us a lifetime?  

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