I wrote recently about the origin of "Kilroy was here." It had to do with ships and rivets.

Ship rivets popped into the news again around April 14, not because it was the birthday of my wife, Kaye, but because it marked the 96th anniversary of the Titanic disaster.

I've eagerly followed the Titanic story since childhood.

Perhaps you heard about inferior rivets having been used on the ship. We scratched our collective heads once again, puzzled as to why the builders would settle for less than the best in that regard.

It reportedly took more than three million rivets to hold the giant liner together. Rivets recovered from the wreck site revealed that if better quality iron had been used, the "unsinkable" ship might not have sunk on that fateful April night in 1912.

PROPHETIC DREAMS

I have always been fascinated with the story, for reasons that might be unfamiliar to you. My family and friends are sometimes painfully aware of my voracious appetite for stories about the paranormal. I am particularly interested in how or why some people seem to have the ability to "see the future," either on purpose or inadvertently.

I have written often about so-called "dreams of prophecy" in which dreamers say they have experienced vivid scenes of plane crashes, ship sinkings and natural disasters. I had such a vivid dream many years ago, and details were confirmed following investigation of an area airplane crash.

There were many such dreams reported prior to and subsequent to the Titanic incident, but I have always been particularly drawn to a book written 14 years before the ocean liner's tragic maiden voyage.

As a teenager, I read about a merchant seaman named Morgan Robertson who might never have been a blip on the historical radar screen, had he not penned that unpublished book in 1898.

It was about an "unsinkable" ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage. Publishers turned the manuscript down many times, telling the author that the concept was simply too unbelievable.

STRANGE SIMILARITIES

The parallels between Robertson's ship and the Titanic are indeed bizarre. Even the experts and skeptics remain baffled after all these years.

The fictional ship was called Titan and the book's title is "The Wreck of the Titan."