James Cameron’s 1997 film grossed $2.2 billion. It also rewrote history in the public imagination. Here is what the film got wrong — and the one thing it got right.

A penniless artist who wins a third-class ticket in a poker game and falls in love with a first-class passenger.

He is entirely fictional. There was a J. Dawson on the ship — Joseph Dawson, a coal trimmer from Dublin. Cameron claimed he did not know this when writing the script. Joseph Dawson’s grave in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has become a tourist attraction because of the coincidence. He was 23 years old and worked shoveling coal in the boiler rooms.

Jack stands on the bow, arms spread, wind in his hair. The most famous scene in the film.

The forecastle deck where that scene takes place was a crew-only working area. Passengers — especially third class — would have been stopped immediately. The scene is cinematically iconic and historically impossible.

In the film, Murdoch takes a bribe, shoots two passengers, then turns the gun on himself in shame.

There is no reliable evidence that Murdoch shot anyone. Some survivors reported gunshots during the evacuation, but testimony is contradictory. Cameron’s portrayal so angered the people of Murdoch’s hometown — Dalbeattie, Scotland — that Fox sent a vice president to personally apologize to his family and donated £5,000 to a memorial fund. Murdoch is regarded as a hero who loaded more people into lifeboats than any other officer.

Wait — actually, Cameron got this one right.

For decades after the sinking, the official position — backed by the British inquiry — was that Titanic sank intact. Survivors who testified they saw the ship break were dismissed as unreliable. When Robert Ballard found the wreck in 1985, it was in two pieces. Cameron’s film was one of the first major depictions to show the breakup accurately. The survivors were right all along.

The breakup of the ship. For 73 years, the official story was that Titanic sank in one piece. Survivors who said otherwise were told they were wrong — traumatized, confused, unreliable. Then Ballard’s expedition proved the survivors were the only ones telling the truth. Cameron animated the breakup sequence using the wreck footage as reference. It is the most historically accurate moment in the film.