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Aug. 6, 1912: Running to return to the presidency as a third-party candidate, Theodore Roosevelt tells the Progressive Party Convention, "There can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country."

 

Aug. 6, 1946: A year to the day after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, General Douglas MacArthur signs an order authorizing two Japanese whaling factory fleets to aid in the economic recovery of Japan.

 

Aug. 6, 1983: The tanker Castillo de Bellver catches fire and sinks off Cape Town, South Africa. The ship’s stern sank with its cargo of roughly 31 million gallons of oil. The bow section was towed away and deliberately sunk.

 

Aug. 6, 2004: An agreement between Native Americans and the federal and local governments clears the way for removal of the Elwha Dam (at right in 2010) in Washington state. The dam removal project will take years, but will open up some of the best salmon and steelhead spawning grounds in the Pacific Northwest.

 

Photo: Henry Mayer, NPCA Photos/Flickr

 

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