On the Anniversary of the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

My home state of Minnesota has some beautiful places, and its share of tragic incidents. This Tweet covers both.

Split Rock Lighthouse, located along Minnesota's North Shore, is lit at dusk on Nov. 10, 2010, the 35th anniversary of the sinking of the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior. The beacon will be lit again on Friday, the 42nd anniversary of the wreck pic.twitter.com/UFUHhQZWWE

— Andrew Krueger (@akpix) November 10, 2017

Yes, the same incident that prompted a famous Gordon Lightfooot song.

History isn't all battles and big men doing big things. Every day, in every place, there's things going on due to people living their lives. The culmination of those doings can add up to major events that impact lives well beyond the immediate happening, and the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald is one such event.

The changes that occurred with that ship's loss are not obvious to many, as they were neither the families of the slain nor working in any of the business directly tied to the ship's work, so all of the regulatory changes and procedural changes are lost on them- but not the effect of safer delivery of taconite ore to steel mills for smelting into steel bars for manufacturers to shape into cars, planes, computer cases, etc. that common people use every day.

History is not just shit that gets you well-paid on Jeopardy. Knowing what went down before, how, and why (including the consequences affecting your life here and now) is fundamental to building and sustaining Civilization; it's how you get on the shoulders of those giants that you need to do the things that make you a giant in turn. The deliberate falsification of history is nothing less than an attack on Civilization by stealing the roots of one's culture by deception. This is fraud. It should be punished accordingly as the high crime that it is.