1. Titanic Belfast is having Christmas and New Year’s events. The Christmas Afternoon Teas and Christmas Party Nights are already sold out. But the Christmas Lunch (20 Dec), New Year’s Eve Party and New Year’s Day Afternoon Tea are still available. For description of the events and to book tickets, go to titanicbelfast.com.

2. How did Harrison Okene live for three days inside a sunken ship off the coast of Nigeria? LiveScience took a look into it and has some fascinating details on how he–and others–have been lucky enough to survive and get rescued.
Here’s How That Cook Survived Inside Sunken Ship For Three Days (4 Dec 2013,Live Science)

3. Those who study Titanic usually learn there were black passengers aboard Titanic yet it is largely unknown. The information is not hard to come by but one has to go looking for it writes Herbert Dyer. And he wonders why in all the Titanic movies they are not shown in any capacity. One reason, just off the top of my head, is I doubt they knew. The names of the famous who died or survived were known. But few bothered to read down the passenger lists to find out the details. Certainly racism plays a factor in some cases. Hollywood movies made during the 1930’s that were marketed world-wide were scrubbed purposefully of anyone unacceptable to Nazi Germany (Jews, blacks, and anything that criticized in any way fascism) until the U.S. was in WW II. The Germans had more influence than the Soviet Union in that regard (they tried to get Hollywood writers and actors to do more films that supported Moscow but were mostly unsuccessful and many did not like the authoritarian way Moscow ran things). Hollywood is better these days on these issues but James Cameron’s movie, as far I can recall, had no depiction of black passengers on Titanic so education needs to be ongoing in this regard.
The Only Black Passengers Aboard The Titanic(5 Dec 2013, allvoices.com)