Fifty years ago tonight, 29 men — including two from Minnesota — died in the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior.

Why it matters: The story of the demise of one of the most beloved ships in Great Lakes history is well known by an older generation in the Upper Midwest, but younger people may not know much beyond Gordon Lightfoot's ballad.

Driving the news: John U. Bacon's new book "The Gales of November" brings the story back to life with a comprehensive look at what happened to the Fitz during that fateful trip across the big lake they called Gitche Gumee.

• Bacon told Axios he interviewed two men who worked on the Fitzgerald in 1975 who had never spoken to a reporter. He also talked to 14 of the 29 families who lost a loved one, including two daughters of Nolan Church, a 55-year-old porter from Silver Bay.
• A key interview with an engineer from a ship sailing just behind the Fitzgerald helps explain what happened, since there were no survivors on the Fitz.

The intrigue: There are likely multiple factors that contributed to the ship's sinking, but none are bigger than a truly epic storm that produced regular swells of 25 feet and, as Bacon reports, waves that likely reached 55 or 60 feet.

• Other factors include a widespread practice of overloading ships and weather forecasting that didn't fully communicate how treacherous things would get.
• The freighter also may have run aground earlier in the night due to an incorrect chart.

The big picture: Bacon's book tells not only the gut-wrenching story of the Fitzgerald's last hours, but also the golden age of the Midwest economy based on iron and taconite from Minnesota feeding factories all over the Great Lakes.

• The region was the Silicon Valley of its time, Bacon said, and he writes about the prosperity the automotive industry brought to cities like Detroit and Toledo.
• "The ship goes down almost at the precipice of some of the most challenging decades for the Midwest," the Michigan author said.

The bottom line: As the Wall Street Journal put it, the story of the wreck has been told in countless books, but "never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful and compelling book."

Go deeper: A new Fox 9 documentary explores the debate about whether divers should return to the wreck for clues.

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Speeding has dropped sharply at the five intersections where Minneapolis installed new speed enforcement cameras last month, city officials said.

Stunning stats: The rate of drivers going 10+ mph over the limit dropped by 30% since the cameras were turned on.

• Speeding by 20+ mph was down 76%.

The intrigue: The cameras, which are accompanied by posted signage, only issued warnings for the first month.

What's next: The system began issuing real tickets on Friday, which city officials hope will lead to further drops in speeding.

Go deeper: Speed cameras are coming to these Minneapolis intersections

🍎 Minneapolis Public Schools and teachers union negotiations reached a tentative contract agreement, averting a strike by some 4,300 educators. Neither side disclosed terms of the deal. (MPR News)

💳 Minnesota officials loaded November's food stamp payments onto recipients' EBT cards this weekend following a federal judge's order for funding to continue during the government shutdown. (KARE 11)

• The Trump administration ordered states to "immediately undo" any moves to restore benefits, but Minnesota officials say there's no way to take the money back.

🏈 A late Vikings rally fell short. Yesterday's loss to Baltimore drops the team to 4-5. (ESPN)

⚽️ Minnesota United FC advanced to the Western Conference semifinals after defeating Seattle on Saturday in a memorable penalty kick shootout. The Loons will play San Diego FC on Nov. 24. (Yahoo! Sports)

Before Minneapolis' election, Katie Cashman argued her City Council ward was only seen as fertile ground for Mayor Jacob Frey's allies because renter-heavy neighborhoods had rarely turned out in force.

• Turnout did skyrocket in Ward 7's downtown, Loring Park and Stevens Square — but it didn't save Cashman.

Why it matters: Ward 7 was one of two council seats flipped by Frey's allies, giving the reelected mayor more leverage over his fiercest critics inside City Hall.

Zoom in: Cashman carried Loring Park by a slimmer margin than she did two years ago, an Axios analysis found.

• Ditto downtown, which saw the greatest turnout increase — but Elizabeth Shaffer fared much better there than Cashman's opponent in 2023.

Plus: Three candidates ran for the Ward 5 seat with the endorsement of Frey-aligned PACs, and one of them — Pearll Warren — emerged as the winner after three rounds of ranked-choice tabulation.

The big picture: Ward 7 turned out to be the election's only true "battleground": Left-wing council members won three other key races despite being outspent citywide nearly 5-to-1 by Frey-aligned PACs.

• Lydia Millard out-fundraised incumbent Aisha Chughtai 3-to-1, but carried only one Ward 10 precinct.
• Shelley Madore similarly lapped Ward 2's Robin Wonsley in fundraising, but got trounced anyway.
• Josh Bassais also had significant PAC support in Ward 8, but Soren Stevenson received the most first-choice votes in all but one precinct.

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Of the roughly 265,000 Minnesota veterans, more than a third of them served during the Vietnam War.

Why it matters: Census data from 2024 shows a dwindling number of World War II veterans in the state, 80 years after the fighting ended.

• There were only 1,224 remaining as of a September 2025 estimate by the National World War II Museum.