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Philadelphia committee led by Benjamin Franklin attempts to regulate waste disposal and water pollution.
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In the first women’s rights convention organized by women, the Seneca Falls Convention is held in New York, with 300 attendees, including organizers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.
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Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first woman to graduate from medical school and become a doctor in the United States.
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A former slave turned abolitionist and women’s rights activist, Sojourner Truth delivers her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.
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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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Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton found the National Woman Suffrage Association, which coordinated the national suffrage movement.
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The legislature of the territory of Wyoming passes America’s first woman suffrage law, granting women the right to vote and hold office.
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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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Margaret Sanger opens the first birth control clinic in the United States.
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Jeannette Rankin of Montana, a longtime activist with the National Woman Suffrage Association, is sworn in as the first woman elected to Congress as a member of the House of Representatives.
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Ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is completed, declaring “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
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Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman, and second pilot ever (Charles Lindbergh was first) to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic.
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Black seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Ala
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Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring
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The Apollo 8 picture of Earthrise
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Earth Day – 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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U.S. rejects the Kyoto Protocol
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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