Category Archives: Environmental Issues

Environmental Issues, Music et al, Peace Love Art and Activism, Today in history

August 9 Peace Love Art Activism

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August 9 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear/Chemical News

Nagasaki

August 9, 1945: the US dropped atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. Total deaths by the end of 1945 may have reached 80,000 from the explosion and exposure to the bomb’s radiation. [2015 New Yorker story] (RS, see Sept 2; NN, see January 24, 1946)

Mihama power plant (Japan)

August 9, 2004: five people died in an accident at the plant in the Fukui province (INES Level 1). Seven people are also injured when hot water and steam leaks from a broken pipe. Officials insist that no radiation leaked from the plant, and there is no danger to the surrounding area. [blog story] (see February 10, 2005)

August 9 Peace Love Art Activism

INDEPENDENCE DAY

August 9 Peace Love Art ActivismAugust 9, 1965:  Singapore leaves Malaysian Federation. [History SG story] (see ID for expanded list of independent countries of the 1960s)

August 9 Peace Love Art Activism

Charles Manson

August 9, 1969: members of a cult led by Charles Manson murdered Sharon Tate, (8 months pregnant), and her friends: Folgers coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring at Roman Polanski’s home in Los Angeles, California. NYT article (see Aug 10)

August 9 Peace Love Art Activism

Watergate Scandal

August 9, 1974: Gerald Ford becomes president. (see Watergate for expanded story)

August 9 Peace Love Art Activism

Irish Toubles

August 9, 1981:  Liam Canning (19), a Catholic civilian, was shot dead by the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), a covername used by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), as he walked along Alliance Avenue, Ardoyne, Belfast. Peter Maguinness (41), a Catholic civilian, was shot dead by a plastic bullet fired by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) while he was outside his home on the Shore Road, Greencastle, Belfast. There were continuing riots in Nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. (see Troubles for expanded story)

August 9 Peace Love Art Activism

Grateful Dead

August 9, 1995: Jerry Garcia, 53, died. (see Dec 8)

August 9 Peace Love Art Activism

Pledge of Allegiance

August 9, 2002: the U.S. Justice Department filed an appeal of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in the Newdow vs. U.S. Congress case in which the court struck down the addition of the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance as unconstitutional. (see Pledge for expanded story)

August 9 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

August 9, 2007: sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, the Logo cable channel hosts the first American presidential forum focusing specifically on LGBTQ issues, inviting each presidential candidate. Six Democrats participate in the forum, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, while all Republican candidates decline. (see Nov 8)

August 9 Peace Love Art Activism

137 SHOTS

August 9, 2013: Cleveland Police Chief Michael McGrath announced that 75 officers faced discipline for their involvement in the 60-car high speed pursuit last Nov. 29 that began downtown and ended in East Cleveland. The internal charges range from engaging in a chase without permission to providing false information on duty reports. Nineteen of them also will have disciplinary hearings that could result in temporary suspensions. None will be terminated. (see 137 for expanded story)

August 9 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

August 9, 2021:  a major new United Nations scientific report  concluded.that nations had delayed curbing their fossil-fuel emissions for so long that they could no longer stop global warming from intensifying over the next 30 years, though there was still a short window to prevent the most harrowing future

Humans had already heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century, largely by burning coal, oil and gas for energy. And the consequences could be felt across the globe: The summer of 2021 alone, blistering heat waves had killed hundreds of people in the United States and Canada, floods had devastated Germany and China, and wildfires had raged out of control in Siberia, Turkey and Greece.

But that was only the beginning, according to the report, issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of scientists convened by the United Nations. Even if nations started sharply cutting emissions immediately, total global warming was likely to rise around 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next two decades, a hotter future that was essentially locked in. [NYT article] (next EI, see Aug 18)

August 9 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

August 9, 2022: jurors in Leflore County, Mississippi examining the case of Emmett Till declined to indict Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman whose accusations prompted the attack.

The jurors heard more than seven hours of testimony from investigators and witnesses with direct knowledge of the case. Still, prosecutors said, the panel did not find sufficient evidence to indict Donham on charges of kidnapping or manslaughter.

“After hearing every aspect of the investigation and evidence collected regarding Donham’s involvement, the grand jury returned a ‘no bill’ to the charges of both kidnapping and manslaughter,” the office of W. Dewayne Richardson, the district attorney for the Fourth Circuit Court District of Mississippi. [NYT article] (next BH, & next ET, see Oct 21 or see ET chronology for expanded story)

August 9 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

August 9, 2025: Jen Pawol made history as the first female umpire to work a regular-season game in the major leagues. [CBS article](next Feminism, see )

Environmental Issues, Today in history

Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962

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Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962

Published September 27, 1962

Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962

Love of Nature

Rachel Carson grew up in rural Springdale, Pennsylvania.  She graduated from Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University) in 1929, studied at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, and received her MA in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932.

During the Depression, the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries hired her to write radio scripts. In 1936 she began a fifteen-year career in the federal service as a scientist and editor. She eventually became the Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962

Writer

Carson also wrote articles for outside publication: “Undersea” (1937, for the Atlantic Monthly), Under the Sea Wind (1941). In 1952 she published a prize-winning study of the ocean, The Sea Around Us and in 1955 The Edge of the Sea.

After leaving government service, she wrote articles designed to teach people about the wonder and beauty of the living world, including “Help Your Child to Wonder,” (1956) and “Our Ever-Changing Shore” (1957). The theme that ran through her writings was that humans are a part of not apart from Nature.

Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962

Post WW  II

After World War II, the use of chemicals to solve problems became increasingly commonplace. The pharmaceutical sector of the economy grew as well as other chemical-related industries.

Because the immediate benefits of such widespread chemical use were so obviously beneficial, society and science ignored or at least did not consider its long-term impact.

On September 27, 1962 Houghton Mifflin published Silent Spring. In it Carson argued that the long-term impact of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was disastrous to the environment, particularly the egg production of birds in the wild.

Luckily for Carson, the bald eagle is the national bird of the United States and America’s sense of patriotism outweighed even the chemical industries outcries.

Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962

Gradual ban

In 1967 Environmental Defense Fund [EDF] formed from a grass roots effort to ban DDT from Suffolk County, NY. The organization brought lawsuits against the government to “establish a citizen’s right to a clean environment.” By 1972, the EDF and other activist groups succeeded in securing a phase-out of DDT use in the United States.

Carson died on April 14, 1964 before she saw the initial successes of her environmental urgings. (NYT obit)

Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962

Rachel Carson Silent Spring 1962
Environmental Issues, Today in history

Cuyahoga River Burns Revives

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Cuyahoga River Burns Revives

June 22, 1969
Randy Newman, “Burn On”
Cuyahoga River Burns Revives

Cuyahoga River Burns Again

Now, the Lord can make you tumble,

The Lord can make you turn,

The Lord can make you overflow,

But the Lord can’t make you burn.

–Randy Newman

Cuyahoga River Burns Revives

June 22, 1969

On June 22, 1969, the oil-sodden floating debris on the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland, Ohio ignited (perhaps by sparks from a passing train) and burned with flames reported up to five stories high.

Again.

This was simply the latest of several Cuyahoga River fires during the century. Although firefighters extinguished this blaze in a half-hour or so, it caused $50,000 in damage.

For decades, the Cuyahoga (and nearly every other urban industrial river in the USA) had been an open sewer for industrial waste, through the times when factory production and easy release of raw sewage was more important than  their environmental impact.

A Smithsonian article stated, “The water was nearly always covered in oil slicks, and it bubbled like a deadly stew. Sometimes rats floated by, their corpses so bloated they were practically the size of dogs. It was disturbing, but it was also just one of the realities of the city. For more than a century, the Cuyahoga River had been prime real estate for various manufacturing companies. Everyone knew it was polluted, but pollution meant industry was thriving, the economy was booming, and everyone had jobs.”

Time magazine covered the Cuyahoga story. Since Time didn’t have a picture of the June 22 fire, it used a picture from June 25, 1952. In its article, Time noted that, “The Potomac left Washington ‘stinking from the 240 million gallons of wastes that are flushed into it daily’ while “Omaha’s meatpackers fill the Missouri River with animal grease balls as big as oranges.” 

Cuyahoga River Burns Revives

Silent Springs

1962’s Silent Spring by Rachel Carson had lighted a fuse and it seemed this Cuyahoga River fire, however small and common, had tipped the balance of popular opinion. 

Like many other activist issues of the 60s, environmentalism had come to the fore.  In exactly 10 months, on April 22, 1970, Americans observed the first Earth Day. An estimated 20 million people nationwide attended events.  Senator Gaylord Nelson promoted Earth Day, calling upon students to fight for environmental causes and oppose environmental degradation with the same energy that they displayed in opposing the Vietnam War. 

Later that year, on November 20, the Nixon administration announced a halt to residential use of the pesticide DDT as part of a total phase-out.

Cuyahoga River Burns Revives

Environmental Protection Agency

On December 2, 1970,  the Environmental Protection Agency began operating under director William Ruckelshaus.

On October 18, 1972, the Clean Water Act went into effect.

 Eagles Return

On February 28, 2018, Cleveland dot com reported that, “The remarkable recovery of bald eagles in Ohio has reached a new milestone with the discovery of the first active nest in Cleveland in more than a century.

The nest is located in the Ohio & Erie Canal Reservation, a narrow stretch of green space situated in the heart of the city’s industrial valley, amid factories, highways and landfills.

Cuyahoga River Burns Revives