By now we all know a little about the Titanic, but HowStuffWorks has a great list of things that were lost on the famous ship, many of which were news to me. Perhaps the most interesting one is some of the lost artworks on the ship:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering the wealth of many of its passengers, the Titanic was carrying a number of works of art, all of which were lost when the ship sank. The most spectacular of these was a jeweled copy of The Rubaiyat, a collection of about 1,000 poems by the 11th-century Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam. The binding of this incredibly luxurious book contained 1,500 precious stones, each set in gold. It had been sold at auction in March 1912 to an American bidder for £405 or around $1,900 -- 15 years worth of wages for a junior crew member on the Titanic.
http://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/10-items-that-went-down-with-the-titanic.htm