USS Nautilus (SSN-571) USS Nautilus (SSN-571) USS "Nautilus" (SSN-571) was the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine and the first submarine to complete a submerged transit of the North Pole on 3 August 1958. Sharing names with Captain Nemo's fictional submarine in Jules Verne's classic 1870 science fiction novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea", and named after another that served with distinction in World War II, the new atomic powered "Nautilus" was authorized in 1951, with laying down for construction in 1952 and launched in January 1954, attended by Mamie Eisenhower, First Lady of the United States, wife of 34th President Dwight D.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea errors, sometimes dramatically changing the meaning of Verne's original intent (including uniformly mistranslating French "scaphandre" — properly "diving apparatus" — as "cork-jacket", following a long-obsolete meaning as "a type of lifejacket"). Some of these mistranslations have been done for political reasons, such as Nemo's identity and the nationality of the two warships he sinks, or the portraits of freedom fighters on the wall of his cabin which originally included Daniel O'Connell. Nonetheless, it became the standard English translation for more than a hundred years, while other translations continued to draw from it and its mistakes (especially the mistranslation of the