1941-1959 Environmental timeline

1. 1941-1959Environmental timeline The tech center at P.N.W B.O.C.E.S

2. 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."

3. Sara-Wiwa born in Bori, Nigeria. See the Environmental History Timeline (1990s). 1941 -- Aqueducts 1941 • 1941 -- Oct. 10, Environmental leader and martyr Ken 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.

4. 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 and dangerous element of the enemy." (Stephenson, 1976, Borkin, 1978).

5. 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.

6. 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)

7. 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)

8. 1943 • 1943 -- Audubon nature center opens in Greenwich, Ct. and becomes a model for other nature centers.

9. 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).

10. 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

11. 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.

12. 1949 • 1949 -- First United Nations conference on the environment, the Scientific Conference on Conservation and the Utilization of Natural Resources.

13. 1950 • 1950 -- Dr. ArieHaagen-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.

14. 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]

15. 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.

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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.)

19. 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)

20. 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.

21. 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