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Nov. 10, 1975:  An iron ore boat (at right) trying to outrun an early winter storm on Lake Superior sinks, and all 29 hands are lost.  "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is immortalized the next year by Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot:  "The lake it is said never gives up her dead when the winds of November blow early."

 

Nov. 10, 1988:  While riding out a North Atlantic storm, the tanker Odyssey caught fire, broke in two and sank 700 miles east of Nova Scotia, presumably spilling its entire cargo of 40.7 million gallons of North Sea Crude Oil.  All 27 crewmembers died.  There was no impact on coastlines, and impact on the marine environment is unknown.

 

Nov. 10, 1995:  Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others are hanged in Nigeria.  The writer-activist led protests against environmental damage in Nigeria’s Ogoni homeland, where hundreds of thousands of residents received virtually no compensation for extensive pollution from oil drilling that had ruined farmlands and coastal fisheries. Saro-Wiwa and the others were charged with murder, prompting an international uproar that they had been framed.

 

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

 

This feature is compiled by Peter Dykstra, an MNN contributor and publisher of Environmental Health News and The Daily Climate.