<p class="ingestion featured-caption">Richard Norris Williams survived the sinking of the Titanic and went on to become an Olympic gold-medalist tennis player.George Rinhart/Corbis/Getty Images; Bettman/Getty Images</p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Richard Norris Williams survived the sinking of the Titanic by swimming to a lifeboat. </li><li>After he was rescued, he refused a doctor's suggestion to amputate his legs.</li></ul><p>Richard Norris Williams was an accomplished tennis player who competed in the 1924 Paris Olympics, but he's most famous for his incredible <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/titanic-famous-survivors-victims-2018-4">survival of the Titanic</a>.</p><p>The RMS Titanic, a British passenger ship operated by the White Star Line, set sail on its infamous voyage on April 10, 1912.</p><p>Over 2,000 people were aboard the ship when it collided with an iceberg and sank during the early hours of April 15, 1912.</p><p>Of all the passengers aboard the Titanic, about 700 people made it into lifeboats. Most of the <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/titanic-famous-survivors-victims-2018-4">Titanic victims</a> who did not make it onto a lifeboat either drowned, went down with the ship, or froze to death in the Atlantic Ocean as they waited to be rescued.</p><p>The survival rate for first-class male passengers aboard Titanic was just 33%, according to the study <a target="_blank" href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27971166">"Titanic: A Statistical Exploration,"</a> making Williams' story of survival all the more extraordinary.</p>