March 24 · This Day in America
Four minutes after midnight, the supertanker Exxon Valdez, loaded with crude bound south, runs hard onto Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound — a hazard everyone knew was there. Eleven million gallons of oil bleed into some of the most pristine water on the continent. Wind and tide carry it across more than 1,300 miles of shoreline. The toll is staggering: roughly 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 seals, 250 bald eagles, whole runs of salmon and herring. Fishermen watch a way of life slick over in days. The cleanup is vast and only partly works; decades later, some species still have not recovered, and oil still lingers under the gravel. Out of the grief came the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and double-hulled tankers. America learned, the hardest way, what a single bad night can cost a place that took ten thousand years to make.
Source: darrp.noaa.gov
Also on this day · 1958
At the height of his fame, with screaming crowds outside, Elvis Presley walks into a Memphis induction station and becomes U.S. Army private 53310761. No special treatment — he asked for none, drove a Jeep in Germany, and served his two years like anyone's son. A nation half-convinced rock and roll was dangerous watched its biggest star get a regulation haircut and salute. It quietly changed how America saw him.
Source: www.history.com