By Richard T. Cartwright, PE, CHMM, (IHMM, AHMP and APICS) Fellow
The saying, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” is more than a cliché. It is a reminder that we must constantly be learning from the past. Here’s a look back at major historical events that happened today in the world of hazardous materials.
December 20, 1987
A passenger ferry crashed and sank after colliding with an oil tanker near Manila, Philippines. The ferry was severely overcrowded, carrying more than twice its stated capacity. Nearly everyone on board (4,386 people) died.
December 20, 1951
The EBR-I (Experimental Breeder Reactor-I) ushered in a new era in nuclear history when it became the first reactor to generate usable amounts of electricity from nuclear energy. It accomplished this feat by lighting four light bulbs at the National Reactor Testing Station of Argonne National Laboratory in Butte County, Idaho. EBR-I was registered as a National Historic Landmark in 1966.
December 20, 1901
Robert Jemison Van de Graaff, an American physicist, was born. He invented the Van de Graaff generator, which is used as a particle accelerator in atomic research. His generator has been used in medical (such as high-energy X-ray production) and industrial applications (such as food sterilization).
December 20, 1880
New York City’s Broadway was first lit by electricity. It soon became known as the “Great White Way.”
December 20, 1879
American inventor Thomas Edison privately demonstrated incandescent light at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. After 13 months of experimentation, Edison found a suitable material for the filament. He discovered that carbonized cotton filaments could operate for 40 hours in a vacuum inside a glass bulb.
December 20, 1868
Harvey Firestone, an American industrialist, was born. He developed pneumatic tires first used on Model T Fords. After moving to Akron, Ohio, he started Firestone Tire & Rubber Company. In the late 1930s, nearly a quarter of all tires used in the United States were made by Firestone.
December 20, 1852
Kitasato Shibasaburo, the Japanese bacteriologist, was born. With Alexandre Yersin, he co-discovered the infectious agent of bubonic plague. As a bacteriologist at Robert Koch’s laboratory in Germany, Shibasaburo worked with Emil von Behring on tetanus and diphtheria to demonstrate the value of antitoxin in conferring passive immunity. They showed that non-immune animals, injected with increasing sub-lethal doses of tetanus toxin, became resistant to the disease. Their milestone paper laid the basis for all future treatment with antitoxins and founded the new field of serology.
Historical hazardous materials management events are posted 365 days a year at this LinkedIn discussion group.
