SNIPPET: In 1985, a French and American undersea research team discovered the "Titanic" lying solemn and haunting 13,000 feet beneath the North Atlantic. Even though the great ship built in Belfast went down 92 years ago at 2:20 on a calm morning of April 15, 1912, just five days into its maiden voyage, (while the doomed musicians of Wallace HARTLEY's dance band switched from ragtime to "Nearer My God to Thee") we cannot but help be moved by the events of that day. A dispatch sent by the "Carpathia," the ship that picked up the 705 survivors in the "Titanic's" lifeboats had summed up the tragedy with terse, English reserve --"Deeply regret advise you 'Titanic' sank this morning, after collision with iceberg, resulting in serious loss of life. Full particulars later." A life vest worn by a passenger that fateful night was donated to the Smithsonian Institute in 1982 by the Chicago Historical Society. According to a curator at the National Museum of American History, the vest was given to the society by Dr. Frank BLACKMARR, a Chicago physician who was a passenger on the "Carpathia," which had picked up distress signals from 58 miles away and steamed to the rescue, arriving two hours after the "Titanic" had gone down. The rescuers took aboard those who had escaped in the 16 lifeboats and 4 collapsible boats - 705 men, women and children out of the 2,227 passengers and crew aboard the ship. (Totals of survivors and passengers vary slightly in different accounts). Dr. BLACKMARR interviewed survivors, (who had stripped off their life vests, dropping them where they stood), as he provided medical aid for exposure. Several of his fellow passengers from the "Carpathia" took dictation and recorded for history accounts like that of an English magistrate whose hands were frozen after a night clinging to an overturned life boat The doctor instinctively knew that some physical relic should be taken away that might tell the story, and he later lectured about the tragedy. In 1998, BLACKMARR's collection of documents and photographs were sold off at the Dunnings Auction House in Elgin, IL, for $50,000. The mighty, 'unsinkable' "Titanic" was truly a technical marvel. So confident was Britain's 'White Star Line' of the ships' invulnerability that its lifeboat capacity was only about half the passengers and crew aboard. One might ask how such an ordinary object such as life vest from this tragedy can still retain such a powerful hold on our collective memories, being nothing more or less than 12 rectangular panels of cork, six on the front and six on the back, sewn into pockets of rough canvas - yet it does. The Smithsonian's vest may not have actually save a life, since most of those who went into the icy water died quickly of exposure, vest or no vest, but rather seems to have belonged to one of the people who managed to survive. A story with photos about same can be found in the April 2004 issue of the "Smithsonian" magazine.