April 22 · This Day in America
On April 22, 1970, an estimated 20 million Americans — roughly one in ten — walk out into the streets, parks, and campuses of the country for the first Earth Day. It is the idea of Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, who had watched the oil-blackened beaches of Santa Barbara and wondered why the energy of the era's protests couldn't be turned toward the air and water. There is no app, no hashtag, no central command — just teach-ins and clean-ups improvised town by town, the largest single demonstration in American history to that point. It works. Within months the country has an Environmental Protection Agency; within the decade, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. A nation looked at its own rivers catching fire and decided, out loud and together, that it could choose differently.
Source: www.archives.gov
Also on this day · 1889
At noon on April 22, 1889, a gun fires and roughly 50,000 people surge across a line into two million acres of unassigned land in the Oklahoma District. By sundown, prairie that held no town that morning holds Guthrie and Oklahoma City, ten thousand people apiece, tents and stakes everywhere. Those who had sneaked across early to claim the best ground earned a nickname Oklahoma still wears with pride: Sooners.
Source: www.census.gov