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Philadelphia committee led by Benjamin Franklin attempts to regulate waste disposal and water pollution.
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The centrality of the Declaration of Independence (1776) to the developments of the 1770s is self-evident. From the Boston Tea Party to the shot heard round the world, Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware, and the Valley Forge winter, the American Revolution’s pursuit of liberty was made meaningful by the founding document of the great American experiment in democracy. https://www.britannica.com/list/25-decade-defining-events-in-us-history
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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.”
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Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden
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The term ecology is coined in German as Oekologie by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel
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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.”
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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 term smog is coined by Henry Antoine Des Voeux in a London meeting to express concern over air pollution
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US Congress created the National Park Service
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“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.
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Having again stayed out of the initial stages of another worldwide conflict, the U.S. entered World War II on the side of the Allies following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (December 1941). 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.
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With the Cold War as a backdrop, U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy gave his name to an era (McCarthyism) by fanning the flames of anti-communist hysteria with sensational but unproven charges of communist subversion in high government circles, while the House Un-American Activities Committee investigated alleged communist activities in the entertainment industry. https://www.britannica.com/list/25-decade-defining-events-in-us-history
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Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring
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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., https://www.britannica.com/list/25-decade-defining-events-in-us-history
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The Apollo 8 picture of Earthrise
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April 22., millions of people gather in the United States for the first Earth Day organized by Gaylord Nelson, former senator of Wisconsin, and Denis Hayes, Harvard graduate student. US Environmental Protection Agency established
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Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer entered into force
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The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan in December. Countries that ratify this protocol commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases
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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.
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Although terrorist attacks had been directed at the United States at the end of the 20th century, a new sense of vulnerability was introduced into American life on September 11, 2001, when Islamist terrorists crashed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the Pennsylvania countryside, resulting in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people.
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U.S. rejects the Kyoto Protocol
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Since at least the 1980s, the U.S. had been politically polarized by so-called culture wars that symbolically divided the country into Republican-dominated red states (typically characterized as conservative, God-fearing, pro-life, and opposed to big government and same-sex marriage) and Democrat-dominated blue states (theoretically liberal, secular, politically correct, and pro-choice).
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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
