Short answers, pulled from the story.
William Gregor discovered titanium in 1791 while examining black sand by a stream in Cornwall, Great Britain. He reported his findings in German and French science journals later that same year.
Prussian chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth independently rediscovered the element in 1795 and named it titanium after the Titans of Greek mythology. He found the new substance within rutile ore from Boinik, now known as Bojničky in Slovakia.
Commercially pure grades of titanium reach an ultimate tensile strength of about 434 MPa which equals common low-grade steel alloys yet remains less dense. The metal is 60% denser than aluminium but more than twice as strong as the 6061-T6 aluminium alloy.
China produced 3,300 thousand tonnes of ilmenite and rutile in 2024 representing 35.3% of the global total. Mozambique followed with 1,908 thousand tonnes accounting for 20.4% while South Africa contributed 1,400 thousand tonnes or 15.0% of worldwide output.
The Kroll process developed by William Justin Kroll in 1932 remains predominantly used for commercial production today despite research into cheaper routes. Lars Fredrik Nilson and Otto Petterson achieved an extraction of 95% pure titanium earlier by chlorinating titanium oxide in carbon monoxide before reducing it to metal using sodium.