35 years after 'Perfect Storm' began forming, six Gloucester sailors remain missing

Six men from Gloucester, Massachusetts, died at sea 35 years ago on the anniversary of one of the most famous storms in Atlantic history. The crew of the fishing boat Andrea Gail was lost during the 1991 event that became known as The Perfect Storm.

The weather system began forming hundreds of miles east of Nova Scotia on October 28, 1991. At the time, the Andrea Gail was operating in the region. The storm’s formation marked the start of a deadly sequence that caught the vessel in violent conditions. The six crew members never returned to shore.

The anniversary coincides with a series of historic events that occurred on October 28 over the centuries. In 1636, the General Court of Massachusetts passed a legislative act to establish Harvard College. Two centuries later, in 1858, Rowland Hussey Macy opened his first New York store at Sixth Avenue and 14th Street in Manhattan. The Statue of Liberty was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland on this day in 1886, serving as a gift from the people of France.

More recently, the date has marked major political and cultural shifts. In 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, providing the means to enforce Prohibition. On October 28, 1962, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev informed the United States that he had ordered the dismantling of missile bases in Cuba. In return, the U.S. secretly agreed to remove nuclear missiles from installations in Turkey, bringing an end to the Cuban missile crisis.

The year 2001 saw the families of those killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks gather at ground zero in lower Manhattan for a memorial service filled with prayer and song. Sports history also marked the date, as the San Francisco Giants won their second World Series title in three years in 2012 by sweeping the Detroit Tigers. In 2018, the Boston Red Sox defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the World Series in five games.

Business and politics continued to evolve on this day in later years. In 2021, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company was rebranding as Meta to encompass its virtual-reality vision, while keeping the Facebook name for the social network. In 2022, Paul Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was severely beaten by a hammer-wielding assailant who broke into their San Francisco home. Less than three weeks later, Nancy Pelosi announced she would remain in the House but step down as speaker in the next Congress. Most recently, in 2024, the Pentagon disclosed that North Korea had sent about 10,000 troops to Russia to train and likely fight against Ukraine.