Danger! fans are relieved tonight that beloved contestant Sam Buttrey – the one who looks like Steve Martin – is safe.
One of his interviews from his Tournament of Champions appearances last month has resurfaced on TikTok. In it, the associate professor of operations research at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., explains that he had recently skipped a tour similar to the one with five people on board that rescue teams were continuing to search for Wednesday evening.
“That’s right, KJ,” Buttrey told host Ken Jennings on the show. “I have a friend who operates a business that will take you to the wreckage of the Titanic. So you go out in a boat and then you go down in a submersible and visit the wreck. It feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. unique, but by a miracle of bad timing, my son John and my daughter-in-law Caitlyn got married this weekend. I was very happy to go. It was a beautiful wedding, and not a shred of regrets in my life.”
Buttrey made his Danger! made his debut on the show in 2021, when he won the show’s Teachers Tournament. He was the second runner-up in the 2022 Tournament of Champions and placed sixth on Danger! masteryand he won over fans with his kind and affable manner.
As for the people who made the trip, the situation remains precarious. U.S. Coast Guard officials told a news conference on Wednesday that a Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater sounds on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Carl Hartsfield, director of the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, described the sounds as “slamming noises”.
The submersible, named Titan, was launched on June 18 by the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince and never surfaced. Titan was en route to visit the site of the wreck of the Titanic, where this ship sadly sank on April 15, 1912, killing over 1,500 people. Fascination with the ship has only grown over the years, fueling, among other things, James Cameron’s 1997 hit film, a traveling exhibit of artifacts from the sunken ship and OceanGate. This is the private company that offers expeditions to see the wreck up close for around $250,000.