Written in 1898, this short novel tells the story of a massive ocean liner, named the Titan, thought to be unsinkable, which strikes an iceberg and sinks in the North Atlantic, in a series of events remarkably similar to the sinking of the Titanic fourteen years later, including the size of the ship, number of bulkheads, etc. While other areas of the story diverge dramatically from the historical events of the Titanic, and there is an unfortunate anti-Semitic depiction of one character, the close similarity of fiction with later fact has grasped the attention of many over the years.