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Philadelphia committee led by Benjamin Franklin attempts to regulate waste disposal and water pollution.
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It was an act of protest of 60 American colonists who threw chests of tea into the Boston Harbour for also against taxation. -
The Whiskey Rebellion was the first test of federal authority in the United States. -
The Louisiana Purchase eventually doubled the size of the United States, greatly strengthening the country. -
The Battle of New Orleans is referred to by many historians as the greatest American land victory of the war. -
Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden
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The Battle of Gettysburg was the turning point in the Civil War, costing the Union 23,000 killed, wounded, or missing in action. -
The term ecology is coined in German as Oekologie by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel
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The term acid rain is coined by Robert Angus Smith in the book Air and Rain
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The Battle of the Little Bighorn was fought along the ridges, steep bluffs, and ravines of the Little Bighorn River, in south-central Montana on June 25-26, 1876. -
Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. -
The term smog is coined by Henry Antoine Des Voeux in a London meeting to express concern over air pollution
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The death of so many innocent civilians at the hands of the Germans galvanized American support for entering the war, which eventually turned the tide in favor of the Allies. -
US Congress created the National Park Service
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Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring
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The Apollo 8 picture of Earthrise
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Martin Luther King Jr., an African-American clergyman, and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05 p.m. -
First Earth Day – April 22. Millions of people gather in the United States for the first Earth Day. US Environmental Protection Agency established
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The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan in December. Countries commit to reducing their emissions of carbon dioxide
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The OPEC oil embargo of October 1973 and the Watergate scandal that led to President Nixon's resignation in August 1974 accelerated the declines. The long grind downward stoked investor pessimism about when stock prices might ever recover. -
Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer entered into force
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U.S. rejects the Kyoto Protocol
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U.S. announces it will cease participation in the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation
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U.S. announces it will rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation