The Suez Canal is completed under French supervision and becomes one of the world’s most important waterways.
Content Index
The completion of this infrastructure leads to lasting controversy over the severe deterioration in the flow of the Ganges and the decay of the river as an inland waterway.
The introduction of rabbits to Australia led to significant loss of other species.
Guano, one of the main export goods in South America in the mid-nineteenth century, becomes a central cause of the Chincha Islands War.
Increased European demand for rubber leads to the destruction of forests in West and Central Africa.
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.