Environmental Timeline

By davidgatton

  • Arbor Day 1972

    Arbor Day founded in 1972 in Nebraska, United States, by John Rosenow. It is the largest membership organization dedicated to tree planting.

  • Clean Air Act 1970

    In 1970 the Clean Air Act is a United States federal law designed to control air pollution on a national level. It is one of the United States' first and most influential modern environmental laws, and one of the most comprehensive air quality laws in the world.

  • Clean Water Act 1972

    Public outcry over dirty rivers spurred Congress to pass the landmark Clean Water Act in 1972. The historic law was designed to protect all of our waters – from the smallest streams to the mightiest rivers – from pollution and destruction.

  • Cuyahoga River Fire 1969

    In 1969 the cuyahoga River caught fire due to all of the pollution from near by factories for years.

  • The Dust Bowl 1930's

    The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the US and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion (the Aeolian processes) caused the phenomenon.

  • Earth Day 1970

    Earth Day is an annual event, celebrated on April 22, on which day events worldwide are held to demonstrate support for environmental protection. It was first celebrated in 1970, and is now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network and celebrated in more than 193 countries each year.

  • EPA 1970

    The United States Environmental Protection Agency was founded in 1970 and is an agency of the Federal government of the United States which was created for the purpose of protecting human health and the environment.

  • Exxon Valdez 1989

    An oil tanker that gained notoriety after running aground in Prince William Sound spilling hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil in Alaska. On March 24, 1989, while owned by the former Exxon Shipping Company, and captained by Joseph Hazelwood and First Mate James Kunkel bound for Long Beach, California, the vessel ran aground on the Bligh Reef resulting in the second largest oil spill in United States history.

  • Forest Service 1905

    Agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands, which encompass 193 million acres.

  • Fukshima, Japan 2011

    An energy accident at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima, initiated primarily by the tsunami following the Tōhoku earthquake on 11 March 2011. Immediately after the earthquake, the active reactors automatically shut down their sustained fission reactions. The tsunami destroyed the emergency generators cooling the reactors, causing reactor 4 to overheat from the decay heat from the fuel rods.

  • Henry David Thoreau 1817

    Born July 12, 1817, an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist,tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. A leading transcendentalist Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection uponsimple living in natural surroundings.

  • Hunting in the 1600’s

    Humans hunted wild animals. While game was at times an important source of food, it was rarely the principal source of nutrition.

  • Lacey Act 2008

    A 1900 United States law that bans trafficking in illegal wildlife. In 2008, the Act was amended to include plants and plant products such as timber and paper.

  • National Environmental Policy Act 1970

    s a United States environmental law that promotes the enhancement of the environment and established the President's Council on Environmental Quality.

  • Sierra Club 1892

    The Sierra Club is an environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who became its first president.

  • Silent Spring 1962

    Silent Spring is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson. The book was published on 27 September 1962 and it documented the detrimental effects on the environment—particularly on birds—of the indiscriminate use of pesticides.

  • Theodore Roosevelt Jr. 1901

    Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was an American statesman, author, explorer, soldier, naturalist, and reformer who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909.

  • Thomas Robert Malthus 1766

    The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus FRS was an English cleric and scholar, influential in the fields of political economy and demography. Malthus himself used only his middle name Robert.

  • Three Mile Island 1979

    The Three Mile Island accident was a partial nuclear meltdown that occurred on March 28, 1979, in reactor number 2 of Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, United States.

  • Trees in the 1600's

    England began to run out of trees to build their boats in the 1600s and did not know what to do.

  • Yellowstone National Park 1872

    Yellowstone National Park is a nearly 3,500-sq.-mile wilderness recreation area atop a volcanic hot spot. Mostly in Wyoming, the park spreads into parts of Montana and Idaho too. Yellowstone features dramatic canyons, alpine rivers, lush forests, hot springs and gushing geysers, including its most famous, Old Faithful. It's also home to hundreds of animal species, including bears, wolves, bison, elk and antelope.