Did you know that at least 80 people from the Middle East were on board the Titanic? The true number of Middle Eastern people on board the doomed cruise liner in April 1912 is probably far higher, but passenger records from the time aren’t reliable. For example, some people were using Anglicised versions of their Arab names and were taken for being Brits or Americans.

Just 38 Arabs are known to have survived the disaster, including the Egyptian translator Hamad Hassab Bureik. He was so traumatised by the event, he went missing shortly afterwards and his wife was staggered when he turned up on their doorstep three years later, in 1915. She’d thought he had drowned.

Plenty of Lebanese were on the Titanic.In fact, 13 residents of the village of Kafr Mishki died, out of a population of just 500. Shawnee Abi Saab, of Lebanon, watched the Titanic go down from a lifeboat and shielded a male passenger in the rescue boat under a dress. Otherwise, she later said, he might have been shot for taking up room (it was strictly women and children first).