So they wouldn't let him take a monkey but he was allowed to take a bat?

Ah man this TIL makes it sound like the monkey actually would have done something. Heh. Pretty funny but the sad part is when you realize a lot of TILs do exactly this.

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You can't prove the monkey wouldn't have found it

Wiki doesn't provide any extra info on this monkey unfortunately:

... a monkey called Titan, which was trained to point at a spot on the map to supposedly indicate where the Titanic was. The scientists issued an ultimatum: "It's either us or the monkey."

What does being trained to point at a spot on the map mean? couldnt anyone point to a spot on the map? and if its trained to do that, does that imply the trainer knows where Titanic was?

So many unanswered questions...

They weren’t allowed to draw on the map I suppose?

Must have been hard to get that monkey off his back.

Poor Jack Grimm, he really did try. By “try” I mean at least his new expedition actually existed. He’d had no luck finding the entrance to the center of the Earth or the Yeti (seriously).

Although, even with the monkey, I suppose it didn’t give him too much scientific credibility to conduct a North Atlantic research expedition by setting off from Florida.

On the third try, he found an odd shaped … something… called it a propeller, declared he’d found her, and quits.

He spent the rest of his life claiming ownership of the wreck based on that ‘propeller’. I imagine it must have been very annoying when he realized he’d passed over Titanic and missed her. Not so bad though, a few years later the French spent over a month slowly combing the ocean floor before later realizing they’d missed her in the first few days by a few hundred feet :)

For those interested, the history of attempts to search for/find/recover Titanic is crazy. They started almost immediately after the sinking and only got more insane until 1985 :)

Might be in the same vein as that octopus who knew who was going to win matches at the FIFA World Cup several years back...

Maybe the monkey just liked pointing at a certain part of the map and the guy - with some hellishly impressive mental gymnastics - assumed "Titan... TitanIC!! He's pointing at the Titanic!"

There are many examples of more ridiculous shit spouted in human history, just look at youtube's documentation of how low some people's IQs have been just in the past 17 years!

Why cant a person point at the map?