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阅读理解 Exploration of the Titanic After resting on the ocean floor, split asunder and rusting, for nearly three-quarters of a century, a great ship seemed to cone alive again. The saga of the White Star liner Titanic, which struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage in 1912, carrying more than 1,500 passengers to their death, has been celebrated in print and on film, in poetry and song. But last week what had been legendary suddenly became real. As they viewed videotapes and photographs of the sunken leviathan, millions of people around the world could sense her mass, her eerie quiet and the ruined splendor of a lost age. Watching on television, they vicariously joined the undersea craft Alvin and Jason Jr. as they toured the wreckage of the luxury liner, wandering across the decks past corroded bollards, peering into the officers quarters and through rust-curtained portholes. Views of the railings where doomed passengers and crewmembers stood evoked images of the moonless night 74years ago when the great ship slipped beneath the waves. The two-minute videotape and nine photographs, all in color and shot 12,500ft.under the North Atlantic, were a tiny sample of 60 hours of video and 60,000 stills garnered during the twelve-day exploration. They are released at a Washington press conference conducted by Marine Geologist Robert Ballard, 44, who led the teams from the Wood Hole Oceanographic Institution that found the Titanic last September and revisited it this July. | 
