Everyone it seems has an own opinion about why the Titanic tragedy continues to have the power to fascinate and capture people’s imagination. Nearly one hundred years after it sank in the frigid waters of the Atlantic, the Titanic remains one of the most widely read about and researched human tragedies in the history of mankind.   As a student of cultural phenomena and human behavior, I too, have some opinions as to why the interest in the Titanic tragedy endures. Here, I will only discuss two of those opinions.  First, human beings have always found it difficult to ignore things that are shocking.  When the Titanic sank in 1912,  snuffing out 1,490 lives, it was a shock to the world on par with the 911 terrorist attacks.  Up until that time, such a massive loss of life would not have been imaginable other than in  war.  I believe the sinking of the  Titanic was so horrific and unfathomable, it became etched in the collective unconscious of humanity. And, just as we find it difficult to turn away when something shocking happens right before our eyes, we are drawn to the Titanic tragedy again and again, simply because it was such a shocking event. The second reason I believe there is such an enduring interest in the Titanic, is because people have always been fascinated by the lives of the rich and famous. We want to know how they got rich and famous, what they do with their time and their money, who they love, what they eat, where they buy their clothes….In short, we want to know everything about them.  Had the Titanic’s rich and famous (i.e., John Jacob Astor, Molly Brown, Dorothy Gibson and Lady Duff Gordon, etc.)  lived today they would undoubtedly be hounded by paprazzi as today’s rich and famous (Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Naomi Campbell, Britney Spears) are.  Even today, we continue to want to know everything we can uncover about the lives of the people, particularly the rich, who were on the Titanic. In this writer’s opinion, as long as human beings are drawn to the shocking and fascinated by the rich and famous, interest in the Titanic tragedy will live on.