5 Times Duluth Made National News

Heavy rains caused some major flooding in June of 2012, many homes and infrastructure were damaged, including the Lake Superior Zoo, which was devastated; the image most news organizations ran with is the shot of Feisty the seal on the run from her flooded exhibit.

A train derailed on June 30th, 1992 which caused a leak of the chemical benzene and a cloud of harmful vapor to cover Duluth and Superior. Thousands were evacuated, and several people were hospitalized. I couldn't find a video, but this report from The New York Times has all the details.

It didn't happen in Duluth, but the story has ties to Duluth, and most of the national coverage came from Duluth, so the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald makes the list. The loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald happened in 1975 and left 29 sailors dead; the ship embarked on its final voyage from Superior.

Every year on July 5th the national news will feature a story of a town, somewhere in America, that had their entire firework show go up in an instant, in 1988, Duluth was that city. The whole show lasted under a minute and caused a fire, but no injuries were reported.

MIX 108 broke this story with a blog and photos on May 16th, 2012 and it quickly spread across the internet and onto a handful of TV talk shows. It all started when a woman in Superior decided to destroy and liquidate her ex-husband's stuff in a very public way.