What 'Titanic' Foresaw

The Titanic Museum in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, has a very good gift shop. Among its wares are sparkling replicas of the Heart of the Ocean necklace, T-shirts that read He’s my Jack → and She’s my Rose →, and, for the kids, tubs of electric-blue “iceberg slime.” In one corner, the visitors who have availed themselves of one of the museum’s main attractions—the chance to pose for pictures on a replica of the doomed ship’s grand stairway—pick up their photos. Next to sample images of grinning tourists stands a rack offering commemorative copies of newspapers originally published in mid-April of 1912. One of them reads, “NO HOPE LEFT; 1,535 DEAD.”