Timeline of Environmental History - 2nd Millennium - 20th Century

20th Century

Year(s) Event(s)
Start End
1900 The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 hits Galveston, Texas and reverses the city's previously rapid growth.
1906 San Francisco earthquake causes collapse of insurance markets and the Panic of 1907.
1908 Tunguska Explosion decimates a remote part of Siberia
1914 1918 World War I, which involves heavy bombardment, explosions, and poison gas warfare.
1918 Spanish Flu kills between 50 to 100 million people worldwide shortly after World War I.
1932 1937 Exceptional precipitation absence in northern hemisphere exacerbated by human activities causes the Dust Bowl drought of the US plains and the Soviet famine of 1932-1933 (harsh economic damage in US and widespread death in USSR)
1937 1945 Pacific War and World War II, with heavy bombardment, genocide, and explosions. Towards the end of the war, nuclear warfare occurs for the first time when Hiroshima and Nagasaki are bombed.
post-1945 Nuclear tests are performed by the United States, Soviet Union, India, Pakistan, China, North Korea, the United Kingdom, and France. Above-ground detonations continue until the Partial Test Ban Treaty is signed in 1963, causing fallout and spreading radiation around the explosion sites.
1957 Sputnik is launched, becomes first man-made object to orbit the earth, and triggers the Space Race between the United States and USSR, culminating with the First man in space in 1961, and the Moon landing, humanity's first ventures to the Moon in 1969
1960 World human population reached 3 billion mark.
1974 World human population reached 4 billion mark.
1970s 2010s Deindustrialization occurs in the Midwest and then much of the United States, as manufacturing industries (and their pollution) move to China, India, and other countries.
1980 Mount St. Helens erupts explosively in Washington state.
1984 Bhopal disaster.
1986 Chernobyl meltdown and explosion, contaminating surrounding area, including Pripyat.
1987 World human population reached 5 billion mark.
1999 World human population reached the 6 billion mark.

Read more about this topic:  Timeline Of Environmental History, 2nd Millennium

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