Obit of the Day
Looking at the famous, infamous, not-so-famous, and unique lives that have shuffled off this mortal coil.
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Obit of the Day (Historical): SS Edmund Fitzgerald (1975)
On this date in 1975, the cargo ship Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior on her way to Detroit with a load of copper ore. Twenty-nine crew went down with the ship making it the greatest loss of life in the history of the lake. The day prior, November 9, was a perfect day but a heavy storm was predicted. The Fitzgerald was heading from Wisconsin in the company of the SS Arthur M. Anderson as a safety measure. Unfortunately the ship could not withstand 85 mph winds and 30 foot waves. Captain Edward McSorley’s last message to the Anderson was “We’re holding our own.”
The ship was found, broken in two, at the bottom of the lake the following summer. It is assumed that the ship broke apart on the surface and the lake swallowed all aboard.
Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot read about the tragedy while on a plane flight and wrote the song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” The song was released in 1976 and hit #1 on the Canadian charts and #2 on the U.S. charts on November 20 of that year.
Additional source: Wikipedia
(Song copyright Gordon Lightfoot; MP3 copyright Anna Coogan, 2011, www.annacoogan.com.)
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