By: HISTORY.com Editors

2023

Submersible Titan implodes on its way to tour the Titanic wreckage

Published: August 05, 2025Last Updated: August 05, 2025

Less than two hours into its planned dive to tour the wreckage of the Titanic, the deep-sea submersible Titan suffers a catastrophic implosion, killing all five passengers on board.

Among the dead was Stockton Rush, founder and CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company that built the Titan and organized the undersea tours. Rush was an enthusiastic promoter of deep-sea tourism and called his passengers “mission specialists,” each of whom paid $250,000 for a chance to see the famous wreckage of the Titanic up close.

In 2018, dozens of experts signed a letter to OceanGate warning that the Titan’s “experimental” design put it at risk of “catastrophic” failure. They worried that the ship’s carbon-fiber hull—large enough to hold 5 passengers—couldn’t withstand the tremendous pressure of repeated dives to more than 12,000 feet below the surface. Several OceanGate employees also sounded safety alarms, but were fired or quit.

Their worst fears were realized on June 18, 2023. The OceanGate surface crew lost contact with the Titan 1 hour and 45 minutes into the dive. Four days of searching followed, followed by the grim discovery of Titan’s wreckage on the ocean floor. The 22-foot vessel had imploded, instantly killing all five people on board.

In addition to Rush, the other victims of the Titan disaster were Hamish Harding, a British airline executive; Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani businessman, and his 17-year-old son, Suleman; and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French explorer who had made more than 35 dives to the Titanic.

In August 2025, the U.S. Coast Guard issued a more than 300-page report that concluded the disaster resulted from a number of safety and design failures and was "preventable."

Timeline

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Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on June 18th

1778

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1798

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President John Adams oversees the passage of the Naturalization Act, the first of four pieces of controversial legislation known together as the Alien and Sedition Acts, on June 18, 1798. Strong political opposition to these acts succeeded in undermining the Adams administration, helping Thomas Jefferson to win the presidency in 1800. At the time, America […]

1812

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President James Madison signs a declaration of war into law—and the War of 1812 officially begins.

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1815

Napoleon defeated at Waterloo

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1934

Indian Reorganization Act is signed into law

In a major reversal of federal policy toward Native Americans, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs the Indian Reorganization Act into law on June 18, 1934. Also known as the IRA, the Indian New Deal and the Wheeler-Howard Act, the act granted a new degree of autonomy to Native Americans in the United States, giving them […]

1940

Hitler and Mussolini meet in Munich

On June 18, 1940, Benito Mussolini arrives in Munich with his foreign minister, Count Ciano, to discuss immediate plans with the Fuhrer, and doesn’t like what he hears. Embarrassed over the late entry of Italy in the war against the Allies, and its rather tepid performance since, Mussolini met with Hitler determined to convince his […]

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1960

Arnold Palmer wins U.S. Open

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1967

The Monterey Pop Festival reaches its climax

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1972

Jet crashes after takeoff at Heathrow, killing 118 people

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1979

Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT-II nuclear treaty

During a summit meeting in Vienna, President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT-II agreement dealing with limitations and guidelines for nuclear weapons. The treaty, which never formally went into effect, proved to be one of the most controversial U.S.-Soviet agreements of the Cold War. The SALT-II agreement was the result of […]

1983

Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space

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1984

Denver radio host gunned down by white supremacists

Talk radio host Alan Berg is gunned down and killed instantly in the driveway of his home in Denver, Colorado, on June 18, 1984. The 50-year-old host, whose show on the station KOA gained a strong following in the early 1980s, stirred up controversy with his outspoken personality and liberal views. He had already been […]

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