RMS Olympic Ismay had previously planned to build a ship named "Olympic" as a sister ship to . The senior Ismay died in 1899 and the order for the ship was cancelled. Construction of "Olympic" began three months before "Titanic" to ease pressures on the shipyard. Several years would pass before "Britannic" would be launched. In order to accommodate the construction of the class, Harland and Wolff upgraded their facility in Belfast; the most dramatic change was the combining of three slipways into two larger ones. "Olympic" and "Titanic" were constructed side by side. "Olympic"s keel was laid on 16 December 1908
Netball and the Olympic Movement try to get netball included on the Olympic programme. Opinions were initially split inside the newly formed organisation as to whether this was a goal worth striving for, but ultimately it was decided to work towards Olympic recognition. The federation's first application was rejected because it referred to the sport as women's basketball and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said there could not be two different sports with the same name on the Olympic programme. This rejection was a driving factor for changing the name of the sport. There was tremendous resistance in Australia and New Zealand to this. IFNA