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.
March 20, 1995
A poison gas terrorist attack in a Japanese subway killed 12 people and injured 4,700. The religious doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo (which means Supreme Truth) released one of the most lethal known nerve gases (Sarin) at multiple locations in Tokyo subways. After releasing the poison gas, the terrorists then took a Sarin antidote and escaped while commuters, blinded and gasping for air, rushed to the exits. Most of the survivors recovered, but some victims suffered permanent damage to their eyes, lungs and digestive systems. Afterwards, a police dragnet found a large stockpile of chemicals used to produce Sarin. They also found plans to buy nuclear weapons from the Russians.
March 20, 1991
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that employers can’t exclude women from jobs where exposure to toxic chemicals could potentially damage the fetus.
March 20, 1934
The first test of a practical radar apparatus was made by Rudolf Kuhnold, who was chief of the German Navy Signals Research Department. His 700-watt transmitter worked on a frequency of 600 megacycles, had a receiver and disk reflectors. It received echoes from signals bounced off a battleship anchored 600 yards away. Radar was to be an important asset during WW II, but ironically it was the U.S. and Great Britain that took Kuhnold’s pioneering work and developed it into a reliable detection system.
March 20, 1916
Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity was published in an academic paper. His theory accounted for the slow rotation of the planet Mercury’s elliptical path, which Newtonian gravitational theory failed to do. Fame and recognition came suddenly in 1919, when the Royal Society of London photographed the solar eclipse and publicly verified Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
March 20, 1904
B.F. Skinner, an American psychologist, was born. His pioneering work in experimental psychology promoted behaviorism, shaping behavior through positive and negative reinforcement, and demonstrated operant conditioning. To investigate how animals learn, he observed their behavior in a simple box with a lever which, when activated by the animal, would give a reward or punishment. Reward, such as pellets of food or water, acts as a primary reinforcer. He observed that animals’ behavior adapted to use the opportunity for a reward. He extended his theories to human behavior, as a form of social engineering.
March 20, 1856
Frederick Taylor, American inventor and industrial engineer, was born. He is known as the father of scientific management. He introduced a scientific approach to time and motion study. Taylor used stopwatches to time laborers as they performed various tasks, counted the number of shovel-loads they each moved and the load per shovel. Thus, he was able to determine optimum shovel size and length. Such careful observations, aimed at recognizing wasted effort and minimizing time used, increased efficiency of factory workers.
March 20, 1847
Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, Austrian physician, began working in a maternity clinic in Vienna, Austria. He is credited with recognizing a high death toll among women during childbirth caused by physicians using unsanitary procedures. Semmelweis instituted the disinfection of physicians’ hands with a concentrated chlorine solution. His research and practical applications assisted later proponents of the germ theory of disease.
March 20, 1800
Alessandro Volta, Italian scientist, dated a letter announcing his invention of the voltaic pile, which is achieved by stacking sandwiches of copper and zinc metal discs between pads of moist material.
March 20, 1345
Black Death, also known as the Plague, was allegedly created during the triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius. It swept across Europe, the Middle East and Asia during the 14th century, leaving 25 million dead in its wake. It is caused by yersinia pestis bacterium, which was carried by fleas that usually traveled on rats. Unfortunately, they jump off to other mammals when the host rats die. People who came down with the plague first complained of headaches, fever and chills. Their tongues often appeared a whitish color before there was severe swelling of the lymph nodes. Finally, black and purple spots appeared on their skin. Death would follow within a week.
Historical hazardous materials management events are posted 365 days a year at this LinkedIn discussion group.
