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Chronicling America is a searchable digital collection of historic newspaper pages through 1963 sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
Follow @ChronAmLOC External and subscribe to email alerts and RSS feeds.
Also, see the Directory of U.S. Newspapers in American Libraries, a searchable index to newspapers published in the United States since 1690, which helps researchers identify what titles exist for a specific place and time, and how to access them.
On April 10, 1912, the RMS Titanic left Southampton, England on her maiden voyage to New York City. Even before this first voyage, the Titanic had already been making headlines, starting in 1908 with the announcement of its planned construction. Designed to be the largest, most luxurious passenger steamship in the world, and thought to be 'unsinkable,' the Titanic is now most remembered because of its tragic sinking. Read more about it!
The information in this guide focuses on primary source materials found in the digitized historic newspapers from the digital collection Chronicling America.
The timeline below highlights important dates related to this topic and a section of this guide provides some suggested search strategies for further research in the collection.
| 1908 | Construction of the RMS Olympic and sister ship,Titanic, is announced. The Olympic is completed first. |
|---|---|
| March 31, 1909 | Construction on Titanic begins. |
| May 31, 1911 | Titanic is launched; engines and interior have not yet been installed. |
| March 31, 1912 | Titanic construction is completed. |
| April 10, 1912 | Titanic begins her maiden voyage. |
