Many people recall that cold and very windy Monday night, November 10, 1975, as we sat before our TV sets, the wind howling like a werewolf on Halloween and heard the following, "we interrupt this broadcast to bring you this news bulletin. It is thought that a ship on Lake Superior sunk earlier tonight. More on this breaking story at 10:00 p.m."

The saga of the Edmund Fitzgerald sinking began the afternoon before, when the Fitzgerald pulled away from the Burlington Northern dock in Superior. The Fitzgerald was loaded with just over 26,000 tons of taconite pellets headed to a steel mill n...