The eruption of this volcano kills over 150 people and transforms the landscape of New Zealand’s North Island.
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Peru nationalizes its guano reserves, beginning a period historians refer to as “the guano age.”
The flood kills more than 2,200 people. In 1889 this was the greatest loss of civilian life in US history.
To protect the recently created Yosemite National Park against exploitation, John Muir founds the Sierra Club as the first grassroots environmental organization in the United States.
The landscape designers Vaux and Olmsted draft plans for New York City’s “Central Park,” a space in which to escape the city’s noise, pollution, and crowding.
The first “Earth Day” is celebrated in the US in 1970; by 1990 it is observed worldwide.
Since its foundation in 1980, the German Green Party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) has maintained a strong environmental platform and reshaped the German political landscape.
The completion of the original Aswan Dam fundamentally changes Egypt’s irrigation system.
A severe drought hits the region of the Sahel and West African Sudan, causing widespread famines.
German geologist Alfred Wegener theorizes continental drift.