Milestones: April 22, 2024

April 22, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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FIRST EARTH DAY — EARTH DAY WAS CELEBRATED IN THE UNITED STATES FOR THE FIRST time on Wednesday, April 22, 1970. Launched as a public awareness event of the world’s environmental problems, including pollution, Earth Day was the brainchild of U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, a staunch environmentalist who believed in the importance of ecology education. “The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy,” Senator Nelson said, “and, finally, force this issue permanently onto the national political agenda.” Millions of Americans including college students — responded through their participation in rallies, marches and educational programs nationwide. Earth Day proved successful in that just three months later, the Environmental Protection Agency was established by a special executive order to regulate and enforce national pollution legislation. Earth Day also led to the passage of the Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts.

More than 200 million people in 141 countries also participated in the 20th anniversary of Earth Day, April 22, 1990, Five years later, President Bill Clinton awarded Senator Nelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in September 1995.

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NATIONAL LEAGUE 2.0 — THE FIRST OFFICIAL NATIONAL LEAGUE BASEBALL GAME WAS PLAYED IN THE LATE 19TH CENTURY, on April 22, 1876. During a game lasting a bit longer than two hours, the Boston Red Caps beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 6-5, at the Athletics’ Jefferson Street Grounds at 25th and Jefferson streets in the state where just a century earlier, the Continental Congress had debated the question of American independence. This was not the country’s first major pro baseball league: the first had been founded five years earlier as the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. However, the loosely organized team lacked central leadership and fell victim to corruption, gambling, drunkenness and other malfeasance. Baseball’s rescuer was William Hulbert, an Illinois businessman and owner of the Chicago White Stockings, who founded a much more stable National League.

Establishing new rules, Hulbert made the National League invite-only and selected the six strongest clubs from the National Association — the Boston Red Stockings (which became the Red Caps), Philadelphia Athletics, Hartford Dark Blues, St. Louis Brown Stockings, Chicago White Stockings and New York Mutuals — and the Louisville Grays and Cincinnati Reds to form the National League as the charter teams.

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NIXON’S DEATH — FORMER PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON DIED ON APRIL 22, 1994 after suffering a stroke four days earlier. Nixon gained notoriety for his involvement in the Watergate scandal and for being the first U.S. President to resign from office. In fact, during a 1978 speech at Oxford University, four years after his August 9 resignation, Nixon admitted he had screwed up during his presidency. However, during the six years of his Presidency, he also had several accomplishments: improving diplomatic relations with China and Russia; and his legislative successes, such as the National Environmental Policy Act, passed in 1969, which created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Clean Water Act of 1972 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Some of these were also fruits of the Earth Day advocacy (see that Milestone, today’s edition). Moreover, Nixon established Amtrak, launched the space shuttle program and authorized the formation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and lowered the voting age to 18.

During his retirement, several later presidents consulted Nixon for his expertise in international affairs.

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MCCARTHY’S DOWNFALL —SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY ON APRIL 22, 1954 INITIATED HEARINGS INVESTIGATING THE UNITED STATES ARMY, which he charged with being “soft” on communism. However, the hearings would not only backfire for him, they gave the American public a better sense of McCarthy’s bullying and drumhead tactics as he became obsessed with the fear that all Americans — except himself — were to some degree communists. However, McCarthy miscalculated when he began interrogating the Army (which is required to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution). Creating propaganda and conspiracy theories and his bluster against an administration from his own Republican party, with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Commander in Chief who had been a widely respected Army general, were McCarthy’s downfall. The climax came when McCarthy slandered an associate of the Army’s chief counsel, Joseph Welch. Welch fixed McCarthy with a steady glare and declared Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness…Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”

Welch would later play the judge in the 1959 courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Murder,” with direction by Otto Preminger and starring James Stewart, Lee Remick and George C. Scott.

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SEDUCTION LAWS — SEDUCTION BECAME ILLEGAL IN OHIO ON APRIL 22, 1886 when that state’s lawmakers passed a statute applying to all men over 18 who taught women. The law also forbade consensual sexual relationships, with a 2-10 year prison sentence. An earlier law in Virginia was already on the books. And an even earlier law in New York, dating from 1848, made it illegal to “under promise of marriage seduce any unmarried female of previous chaste character.”

Women of course exploited such laws in order to coerce men into marriage. One court case in which the man faced conviction wound up becoming a marriage ceremony when the defendant proposed to the young lady.

See previous milestones, here.