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Earth Day started as a US 'teach-in' 56 years ago. Now it's a global event
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Earth Day started as a US 'teach-in' 56 years ago. Now it's a global event

  • The Associated Press

Millions of people around the world will pause, at least for a moment, to mark Earth Day. The annual event is Wednesday. It was founded by people who hoped to stir activism to clean up and preserve a planet that's now home to some 8 billion humans and trillions of other organisms. Earth Day has its roots in growing concern over pollution in the 1960s. That's when author Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring," about the pesticide DDT and its damaging effects on the food chain, hit bestseller lists and raised awareness about nature's delicate balance. A U.S. senator from Wisconsin, Democrat Gaylord Nelson, had the idea that would become the first Earth Day in 1970.

Lifestyle

This Day in History

  • Updated

In 1540, Pope Paul III issued a papal bull establishing the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, as a religious order.