Important Dates in American History ~ Kaydin Egeland

U.S. announces it will rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation

2021 BCE

Once inaugurated, Biden signed an executive order to rejoin the agreement on January 20, 2021. The country formally rejoined the Paris Agreement on February 19, 2021. The period from November 4, 2020 to the date of rejoining represents 107 days

U.S. announces it will cease participation in the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation

2017 BCE

On June 1, 2017, United States President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would cease all participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation, contending that the agreement would "undermine" the U.S. economy, and put the U.S. "at a permanent disadvantage."

U.S. rejects the Kyoto Protocol

2001 BCE

Clinton Administration Vice President Al Gore was a main participant in putting the Kyoto Protocol together in 1997. President Bill Clinton signed the agreement in November 1998, but the US Senate refused to ratify it, citing potential damage to the US economy required by compliance

The Monica Lewinsky Affair

1998 BCE

Having failed to push through a number of high-profile policy initiatives early in his first term as president and confronted with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress after the 1994 midterm election, Democrat Bill Clinton pivoted toward political accommodation, oversaw a robust economy, and reversed the spiraling budget deficit.

The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan in December. Countries commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide

1997 BCE

The Kyoto Protocol, a legally binding treaty was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on December 11, 1997 and entered into force on February 16, 2005. The Protocol commits industrialized countries to limit and reduce GHG emissions by 5.2% below the 1990s base year level by 2008–12 in aggregate (the first commitment period)

Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer entered into force

1989 BCE

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (the Montreal Protocol) is an international agreement made in 1987. It was designed to stop the production and import of ozone depleting substances and reduce their concentration in the atmosphere to help protect the earth's ozone layer.

Watergate Scandal

1972 BCE

On August 9, 1974—facing likely impeachment for his role in covering up the scandal surrounding the break-in at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., in June 1972—Republican Richard Nixon became the only U.S. president to resign. The loss of faith in government officials that resulted from the scandal suffused both popular and political culture with paranoia and disillusionment for the remainder of the decade.

First Earth Day – April 22. Millions of people gather in the United States for the first Earth Day. US Environmental Protection Agency established

1970 BCE

Earth Day. Earth Day was first observed on April 22, 1970, when an estimated 20 million people nationwide attended the inaugural events at tens of thousands of sites including elementary and secondary schools, universities, and community sites across the United States

Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

1968 BCE

At the center of the widespread social and political upheaval of the 1960s were the civil rights movement, opposition to the Vietnam War, the emergence of youth-oriented counterculture, and the establishment and reactionary elements that pushed back against change. The April 4, 1968, assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the most prominent civil rights leader, revealed the tragic, violent consequences that could result from a country’s political polarization.

The Apollo 8 picture of Earthrise

1968 BCE

Earthrise is a photograph of Earth and some of the Moon's surface that was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. Nature photographer Galen Rowell described it as "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken"

Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring

1962 BCE

Rachel Carson's watershed work Silent Spring is first published on September 27, 1962. Originally serialized in The New Yorker magazine, the book shed light on the damage that man-made pesticides inflict on the environment

The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

1945 BCE

In August 1945, with the war in Europe over and U.S. forces advancing on Japan, U.S. Pres. Harry S. Truman ushered in the nuclear era by choosing to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in the hope that the terrible destruction unleashed would prevent an even greater loss of life that seemed likely with a protracted island-by-island invasion of Japan.

Stock Market Crash

1929 BCE

“The chief business of the American people is business,” U.S. Pres. Calvin Coolidge said in 1925. And with the American economy humming during the “Roaring Twenties” (the Jazz Age), peace and prosperity reigned in the United States…until it didn’t. The era came to a close in October 1929 when the stock market crashed, setting the stage for years of economic deprivation and calamity during the Great Depression.

US Congress created the National Park Service

1916 BCE

On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the act creating the National Park Service, a new federal bureau in the Department of the Interior responsible for protecting the 35 national parks and monuments then managed by the department and those yet to be established

The term smog is coined by Henry Antoine Des Voeux in a London meeting to express concern over air pollution

1905 BCE

Henry Antoine Des Voeux in his paper, “Fog and Smoke” for a meeting of the Public Health Congress in London[1]. He combined two words, smoke and fog, to create a new term smog. It referred to a type of air pollution that was caused by the heavy use of coal in industries and home heating

The term acid rain is coined by Robert Angus Smith in the book Air and Rain

1872 BCE

when Robert Angus Smith, a Scottish chemist working in London, noticed that rain tended to be more acidic in areas with more air pollution and that buildings crumble faster in areas where coal is burned.

The term ecology is coined in German as Oekologie by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel

1866 BCE

The term “ecology” was coined by the German zoologist, Ernst Haeckel, in 1866 to describe the “economies” of living forms. The theoretical practice of ecology consists, by and large, of the construction of models of the interaction of living systems with their environment (including other living systems)

Battle of Gettysburg

1863 BCE

In July 1863, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation, in the small Pennsylvania crossroads town of Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee’s invading Army of Northern Virginia sustained a defeat so devastating that it sealed the fate of the Confederacy and its “peculiar institution.” Within two years the war was over, and before the end of the decade the South was temporarily transformed by Reconstruction.

Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden

1854 BCE

Henry David Thoreau's classic Walden, or, A Life in the Woods is required reading in many classrooms today. But when it was first published—on August 9, 1854—it sold just around 300 copies a year.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

1848 BCE

Signed on February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo brought to a close the Mexican-American War (1846–48) and seemingly fulfilled the Manifest Destiny of the United States championed by Pres. James K. Polk by adding 525,000 square miles (1,360,000 square km) of formerly Mexican land to the U.S. territory.

Monroe Doctrine

1823 BCE

The Era of Good Feelings (roughly 1815–25), a period of American prosperity and isolationism, was in full swing when U.S. Pres. James Monroe articulated a set of principles in 1823 that decades later would be called the Monroe Doctrine. According to the policy, the United States would not intervene in European affairs, but likewise it would not tolerate further European colonization in the Americas or European interference in the governments of the American hemisphere.

Battle of New Orleans

1815 BCE

On January 8, 1815, a ragtag army under the command of Andrew Jackson decisively defeated British forces in the Battle of New Orleans, even though the War of 1812 had actually already ended. News of the Treaty of Ghent (December 24, 1814) had yet to reach the combatants.

Constitution of the United States of America

1787 BCE

With the war won, independence secured, and the Articles of Confederation proving inadequate, the Founding Fathers laid down the law by which the new country would be governed in the elegantly crafted Constitution, which, depending upon one’s perspective, was meant to either evolve to meet changing circumstances or to be strictly interpreted to adhere to the Founders’ “original intent.”

Philadelphia committee led by Benjamin Franklin attempts to regulate waste disposal and water pollution

1769 BCE

Franklin served as an unofficial host for delegates, opening his garden to them with a keg of dark beer or a cup of tea at the ready