The 1st Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970 and was founded by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. Most consider it to be the birth of the environmental movement.
Nelson created Earth Day after seeing the damage caused by a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, CA in 1969. Nelson wanted to appeal to college students with the idea of Earth Day as he hoped to start a day of learning and activism for the environment. He was inspired by the student anti-war movement and wanted to tap into the same kind of energy on school campuses to get kids to take notice of enviornmental issues like air and water pollution.
Nelson actually tried to put the environment on the agenda in Congress when he was first elected to office in 1963, but he was told over and over that Americans were not concerned about the issues. He then went to the American people to get the movement started, focusing his attention on college students.
Students from 2,000 colleges and universities, over 10,000 primary and secondary schools and hundreds of communities across the United States got together in their local communities to mark the occasion of the first Earth Day.
