By Richard T. Cartwright, PE, CHMM, (IHMM, AHMP and APICS) Fellow. Richard died April 21, 2025; honoring the work he did with hazmat history is one small way to keep his memory alive.
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.
June 6, 1988
Three 50-pound snapping turtles were found living in New York City’s Bronx sewage treatment plant. Municipal sewer workers surmised that these former house pets must have been flushed down the toilet several years earlier.
June 6, 1981
A train avoided hitting a cow in India, but 600 people died. The train engineer, who believed that cows are sacred animals, sought to avoid harming a cow at all costs that had crossed the tracks, and braked too hard. The passenger cars slid on wet rails causing the last seven derailed cars to plunge straight into the murky river.
June 6, 1967
During the Six-Day War, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya and Algeria pledged to stop supplying oil to the United States, Great Britain and West Germany. The oil embargo lasted two months. Americans soon began to realize how dependent our society is on foreign oil and imported hazardous materials.
June 6, 1944
General Eisenhower gave the go-ahead on D-Day for a massive invasion of Europe. The Allied invasion (150,000 troops) was the largest amphibious mobilization of soldiers and hazardous materials in world history.
June 6, 1943
Richard Smalley, American chemist and physicist, was born. He is known as the father of nanotechnology. We are just starting to understand the full impact of the benefits and hazards of nanomaterials.
June 6, 1942
Adeline Gray, American parachutist, made the first live jump using a nylon parachute in Hartford, Conn. Formerly, parachutes were all made of silk. The bad news is that most of the Asian sources of silk fabric were cut off during WWII. The good news is that nylon, a newly invented synthetic substitute for silk, was available.
June 6, 1907
Persil, a household detergent, was marketed in Germany. It was the world’s first “self-acting” washing powder. Persil was a combination of both washing and bleaching agents in one powder. The brand name was derived from the first syllables of its two most important chemical components, perborate (a bleaching agent) and silicate.
June 6, 1816
Ten inches of snow fell in New England during the infamous “year without a summer.” This dramatic climate change was caused by the cataclysmic Mount Tambora volcanic eruption during the previous year in Indonesia. It was the most powerful eruption in recorded history. Tambora’s volcanic cloud lowered global temperatures by 3°C. Even a year after the April 1815 eruption, most of the northern hemisphere experienced sharply cooler temperatures during the summer months.
Historical hazardous materials management events are posted 365 days a year at this LinkedIn discussion group.
