Download 1941-1959 Environmental timeline

1941-1959
Environmental timeline
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1941
• 1941 -- St. Louis adopts first strict smoke
control ordinance in U.S. Meanwhile, St. Louis
Post Dispatch wins first Pulitzer Prize for
environmental reporting. The Pulitzer
committee cites the Dispatch "For its
successful campaign against the smoke
nuisance."
•
Sara-Wiwa born in Bori, Nigeria. See
the Environmental History Timeline
(1990s).
1941 -- Oct.
10, Environmental
leader1941
and martyr Ken
1941
-- Aqueducts
begin diverting water from streams feeding Mono Lake
into the Los Angeles water supply. One of the oldest
natural lakes in North America, the Southern California
lake had 4.3 million acre-feet in 1941 and dropped 45
feet in height to 2.1 million acre feet in 1982. It has
recovered 11 feet.
• 1941-- Rachel Carson writes Under the Sea-Wind,
Oxford University Press, a naturalist's picture of ocean
life. Carson would become famous in 1962 for her book
Silent Spring, which warned against overuse of
pesticides.
1942
• 1942-- Sen. Harry S. Truman's war investigating committee
exposes a treasonous pre-war relationship between American
companies Ethyl, Standard Oil (Exxon), General Motors and
DuPont on the one hand and the German chemical company
I.G. Farben on the other. Internal company memos described
the relationship as a "full marriage" which was "designed to
outlast the war" no matter which side won. Ethyl had given
leaded gasoline production technology to I.G. in return for
patents on synthetic rubber to G.M. and DuPont. The U.S.
companies did little research but vigorously protected the
German synthetic rubber patents. When the war opened,
supplies of rubber (a critical strategic material) were cut off by
the Japanese and synthetic rubber from oil had been blocked.
At the time, British intelligence calls Standard Oil a "hostile
1942
• 1942 -- Controversy over dam that would
inundate Cook Forest, a state park with the
last of Pennsylvania's virgin forests.
• 1942-- Critical shortage of rubber leads to
development of new crops such as guyule and
new chemical approaches such as corn
ethanol to butadiene. By 1944, two thirds of
the Army and Air Force is rolling on tires made
from Midwestern corn.
1941
• 1941 -- "Action Club" formed to combat
pollution from paper mills near Augusta,
Maine.
• 1941 -- Between 25,000 and 60,000 rooftop
solar water heaters are being used, mostly in
Florida and California. In Miami 80 percent of
new homes are built with solar hot water. War
materials needs prevent industry expansion.
(Butti & Perlin, 1980)
1942
• 1942 -- Controversy over dam that would
inundate Cook Forest, a state park with the
last of Pennsylvania's virgin forests.
• 1942-- Critical shortage of rubber leads to
development of new crops such as guyule and
new chemical approaches such as corn
ethanol to butadiene. By 1944, two thirds of
the Army and Air Force is rolling on tires made
from Midwestern corn. (Bernton, 1982)
1943
• 1943 -- Audubon nature center opens in
Greenwich, Ct. and becomes a model for
other nature centers.
1944
• 1944 -- Cleveland, Ohio natural gas explosion
• 1944 -- Soil Conservation Society formed by Hugh
Bennett.
• 1944 -- War Production Board reports that
industrial accidents killed 37,600 workers and
injured 210,000 permanently and 4.5 million
temporarily between Dec. 7, 1941 and Jan. 1,
1944. Comparable figures for soldiers were
30,100 killed and 75,000 wounded. (Corn, 1992).
1945
• 1945 -- Corps of Engineers abandons Potomac
River dam after a storm of controversy and
protests from Izaak Walton League, National
Parks Association, garden clubs and others.
• 1945 -- Aug. 6 and 9 -- US drops atomic bombs on
the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• 1945 -- U.S. President Harry Truman issues
Proclamation on the Continental Shelf clears way
for oil drilling offshore
1946-48
• 1946-48 -- Bikini and Eniwetok atolls nuclear
tests South Pacific, Marshall Islands. These
tests were far smaller than the hydrogen
bomb tests of 1954.
1949
• 1949 -- First United Nations conference on the
environment, the Scientific Conference on
Conservation and the Utilization of Natural
Resources.
1950
• 1950 -- Dr. Arie Haagen-Smit identifies causes
of smog in LA as interaction of hydrocarbons
(cars largest source) and oxides of nitrogen.
• 1950 -- President Harry Truman says
government and industry should join forces in
a battle against death-dealing smog.
1951
• 1951, April 17 -- American Steel and Wire Co.
settles the Donora, Pennsylvania smog
disaster suits for a reported $235,000 in
Pittsburgh April 17. Some 130 suits seeking
$4,643,000 were filed as a result of the 1948
disaster in which 20 persons died and 5,190
were made ill. [Facts On File print edition,
1949, p. 336K]
1952
• 1952 -- Dec. 4-8 -- Four thousand people die in
the worst of the London "killer fogs." Vehicles
use lamps in broad daylight, but smog is so
thick that busses run only with a guide
walking ahead. By Dec. 8 all transportation
except the subway had come to a halt.
1953
• 1953 -- British begin nuclear testing at
Maralinga nuclear test site in Southern
Australia.
• 1953 -- New York smog incident kills between
170 and 260 in November
1954-55
• 1954 -- Heavy smog conditions shut down industry and
schools in Los Angeles for most of October.
• 1954 -- Formation of the Humane Society of the U.S. by
former American Humane Association National Humane
Review editor Fred Myers, Cleveland Amory, Helen Jones,
and others, mostly formerly associated with the American
SPCA or the AHA.
• 1955 - November 29-- Accident kills several researchers at
the experimental breeder reactor #1, at Arco, Idaho.
• 1955 -- International Air Pollution Congress held in New
York City.
• 1955 -- Plans for a dam in Dinosaur National Monument
park are dropped after widespread opposition
1956
• 1956 -- Aug. 29 -- Controversy over proposed
nuclear reactor in Laguna Beach, Michigan leads
United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther to
file suit to halt construction, which had begun 21
days beforehand. Reuther said the Atomic Energy
Commission had betrayed public trust by moving
forward with an "unproven and hazardous" fast
breeder plutonium reactor. The controversy
shows the fault line that has developed between
Democrats and labor against Republicans and
nuclear power. (Reuther assails AEC, New York
Times, Aug. 30, 1956, p. 49.)
1957
• 1957 -- The Soviet Union scores a space-race first by shooting into orbit a
small stray dog named Laika. She lived only a few hours, according to
recently released Soviet archives, but at the time the world believed she
had lived long enough to be burned alive in re-entry into the earth's
atmosphere. Somewhat naive horror at the fate of Laika outraged animal
advocates everywhere. The public was then largely unaware that pound
dogs were being experimented upon, electrocuted, decompressed, shot,
or gassed by the tens of millions, throughout the world, while the Soviet
propaganda machine made Laika probably the most famous dog in history
before discovering that millions of people were more upset about her
plight, isolated in space, than were thrilled at the scientific triumph that
she represented. Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev responded by
authorizing the formation of the Animal Protection Society, the first and
only Soviet humane organization. It was disbanded and supplanted by
independent nonprofit humane groups after the 1990 collapse of
Communism. (M. Clifton, 2007)
1958
• 1958 -- Feb -- Founding of the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament in the UK and US. Founders
include Bertrand Russell, JB Priestley, AJP Taylor,
Michael Foot, Pat Arrowsmith, Sheila Jones and
Canon John Collins
• 1958 -- Congressional passage of the Delany
Amendment, which mandated animal testing as
part of the assessment of consumer products for
cancer-causing properties. The Delany
Amendment was repealed in 1996.
1959
• 1959, Dec. 2 -- Some 420 people die when the
Malpasset Dam on the Reyran River collapses and
floods Frejus, a town on the French Rivierra. The
dam had been weakened by torrential rains and
by blasting in a nearby mine.
• 1959 -- George Schaller writes The Year of the
Gorilla, a book about mountain gorillas in the
Congo. Later, Diane Fossey will credit Schaller's
book as her inspiration