MNN - Mother Nature Network

April 13, 1992: The walls of a century-old network of freight and utility tunnels in downtown Chicago are punctured, sending the Chicago River flowing beneath the entire downtown "Loop" business district. It takes weeks to pump out a quarter billion gallons of water from the lower levels of office buildings.

 

April 13, 2008: The London Independent reports on a Russian town of 70,000 people that is so polluted that its mayor is calling for its abandonment. Chapayevsk, near the Volga River, hosted several factories that made chemical weapons for the Soviet Union. Liver, kidney and throat cancer rates are three times higher than other nearby towns. Relocation of the entire town would be an "ideal solution," says Mayor Nikolai Malakhov.

 

April 13, 2010: Brazilian rancher Vitalmiro Moura (above right, in 2007) is sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in the 2005 murder of Dorothy Stang, a nun who had worked to oppose the destruction of the Amazon. A second rancher, Regivaldo Galvao, also receives a 30-year sentence for the murder the following month.

 

 

This feature is compiled by Peter Dykstra, an MNN contributor and publisher of Environmental Health News and The Daily Climate.