The Society for the Preservation of Nature in Israel is founded in 1953; today it is the largest conservation organization in Israel.
Launch of a nationwide land reclamation campaign.
First contact of Europeans with potatos in the Magdalena Valley in the Colombian Andes
More than three million Bengali perish in a famine that remains one of the worst catastrophes in the history of modern India.
Sir Albert Howard, one of the pioneers of organic agriculture, publishes his work An Agricultural Testament.
The Persian scholar Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn ibn Ali al-Mas’udi (c. 896-956) is among the first to record the use of simple vertical-shaft windmills in Sistan, Persia.
The first nicotiana tabacum (tobacco) plants are cultivated in Jamestown, Virginia.
Demonstrating against hormone-treated beef, protesters destroy a McDonald’s restaurant in Millau, France.