Fact #35639
When:
Short story:
Eddie Foy is starring in the musical comedy Mr. Bluebeard at the Iroquois Theatre, Chicago, Ilinois, USA, when a fire breaks out, burning the theatre to the ground and killing 602 patrons. The theatre had previously been described as "the newest, the largest and as far as human power could make it, the safest theater in Chicago." Within a year, the disaster will inspire the songs The Iroquois On Fire [1904] by Zella Evans, The Iroquois Fire by Thomas Quigley [an amateur songwriter who witnessed the blaze], The Burning Iroquois [1904] by Mathew Goodwin and Edward Stanley, and The Burning Of The Iroquois [1904] by Thomas R. Confare and Morris S. Silver. More recently, Sheri Kling has composed I Burn For You (Chicago 1903) about the same incident.
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