110px|The Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was a 729-foot (222 m) Great Lakes freighter
that made headlines after sinking in Lake Superior in a massive storm
on November 10, 1975, with near hurricane-force winds and 35-foot
(11 m) waves. The Fitzgerald suddenly sank approximately 17 miles
(27 km) from the entrance to Whitefish Bay, at a depth of 530 feet
(160 m). Her crew of 29 perished without sending any distress signals,
and no bodies were recovered; she is the largest boat to have sunk in
the Great Lakes. The Fitzgerald carried taconite from mines near
Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Toledo and other ports.
Many theories, books, studies and expeditions have examined the cause
of the sinking. Her sinking is one of the most well-known disasters in
the history of Great Lakes shipping and is the subject of Gordon
Lightfoot's 1976 hit song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".
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<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1865:
Henry Wirz, the superintendent of the Confederacy's Andersonville
Prison, was hanged after a controversial conviction, becoming the only
American Civil War soldier executed for war crimes.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wirz>
1945:
Indonesian National Revolution: Following the killing of the British
officer Brigadier A. W. S. Mallaby a few weeks prior, British forces
began their retaliation by attacking Surabaya, Indonesia.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Surabaya>
1958:
Merchant Harry Winston donated the Hope Diamond , the "most famous
diamond in the world", to the Smithsonian Institution.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Diamond>
2006:
Prominent Sri Lankan Tamil politician and human rights lawyer Nadarajah
Raviraj was assassinated in Colombo.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadarajah_Raviraj>
2007:
At the Ibero-American Summit in Santiago, Chile, King Juan Carlos I of
Spain asked President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez "¿Por qué no te callas?"
after Chávez repeatedly interrupted a speech by Spanish Prime Minister
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C2%BFPor_qu%C3%A9_no_te_callas%3F>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
permablock (v):
(Internet slang) To permanently block the access of a user
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/permablock>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he
is only completely a man when he plays.
--Friedrich Schiller
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Schiller>