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.
March 14, 2011
The third explosion in four days rocked the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The explosion occurred near a suppression pool in the reactor’s containment vessel. The pool was later found to have a defect.
March 14, 1910
An oil well blew out near Maricopa, Calif. The Lakeview Gusher in Kern County oilfield was the largest accidental oil spill in U.S. history. It lasted 18 months; 9 million barrels were spilled. More than half of the spilled oil evaporated or seeped back into the ground. At the time of this blow out, blowout preventers were not available. The invention of the blowout preventer in 1922 improved drilling safety and reduced catastrophic oilfield gushers.
March 14, 1899
Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin received a U.S. patent for his navigable balloon, a rigid airship known as the Zeppelin. The overall cylindrical shape with rounded ends was covered with a cotton shell, framed with aluminum struts, wire-braced and contained several independent hydrogen balloons used for lift.
March 14, 1879
Albert Einstein, American theoretical physicist, was born in Germany. Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity drastically altered our view of the universe. His work on particle and energy theory helped make possible quantum mechanics and, ultimately, the atomic bomb. Einstein theorized that light is made up of individual quanta (photons) that demonstrate particle-like properties while collectively behaving like a wave. This hypothesis was arrived at through Einstein’s examination of the photoelectric effect, a phenomenon in which some solids emit electrically charged particles when struck by light. He devised a new method of counting and determining the size of atoms and molecules in a given space. He offered a mathematical explanation for the constant erratic movement of particles suspended in a fluid, known as Brownian motion. This provided indisputable evidence of the existence of atoms, which at that time was still disputed by a few scientists. In special relativity, time and space are not absolute, but relative to an observer’s motion. Thus, two observers traveling at great speeds in regard to each other would not necessarily observe simultaneous events in time at the same moment, nor necessarily agree in their measurements of space. In Einstein’s theory, the speed of light, which is the limiting speed of any particle having mass, is constant in all frames of reference. Einstein’s most famous announcement was that mass and energy were equivalent and could be calculated with an equation, E=mc2.
March 14, 1839
English scientist Sir John Herschel was first to use the word “photography” in a lecture to the Royal Society. He used paper washed in a solution of ammonium-citrate of iron. Herschel brought out the image with a solution of soda or chloride of gold, or with nitrate of silver, and fixing it in the first case by washing it with iodide of potassium and in the second, with hyposulfite of soda.
Historical hazardous materials management events are posted 365 days a year at this LinkedIn discussion group.
