1:43 p.m. - 2007-07-17
On the Greatest Song Ever
THE LEGENDS OF "THE WRECK OF THE EDMUND FITZGERALD", PART I
*No listener has ever gotten to the end of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". But should this ever happen, according to the legends, the twenty-nine crewmen who perished in the wreck will walk out of Lake Superior at Whitefish Bay, and a massive load of iron ore will miraculously materialize in Cleveland.
*According to the legends, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" has never been completed. It is said that Gordon Lightfoot is even today writing new verses, and that he will stop only when the ship's bell is rang a thirtieth time at the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral.
*Nobody knows how many verses are contained in "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". What mathematicians believe to be the closest estimate was made by Daniel Tammet, a math savant famous for calculating and memorizing pi to its twenty-two thousandth, five-hundred and fourteenth decimal place.
*So vast is the duration of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" that scientists have begun using the song as a unit of time measurement. These units are called TWOTEFs, and they eliminate the need to measure geological and astronomical time in cumbersome millions and billions of years. For example, instead of saying that the earth is twelve billion years old, scientists say that it's five TWOTEFs old; the Big Bang occurred sixteen TWOTEFs ago, and so forth.
*If "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" could be converted into iron ore, it would weigh much more than twenty-six thousand tons more than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty. It would, according to the legends, weigh twenty-six thousand tons more than TWENTY-SIX THOUSAND EMPTY EDMUND FITZGERALDS!
*It is said that if one begins singing "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" during the month of November, it will take until the FOLLOWING November before the the next mention of the month in the song. And then still another year until the next mention. And so forth until the last November and the end of time.
And so the legends live on.
