Today is November 6, and it’s a holiday! But I bet you didn’t know that. You see, unlike other holidays that have primarily caught on because of catchy names like Mother’s Day and Halloween — that is, holidays with competent public relations teams — today is the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. The United Nations, which could be accused of naming things somewhat awkwardly from time to time, does helpfully provide an abbreviated name: World Day to Protect the Environment in War. Probably inevitably, there’s also an acronym. So if you find it hard to recall the whole name, just memorize IDPEEWAC (and good luck).
The UN establishing something like a day to protect the environment when bombs are falling on it is just the sort of thing that might be discussed at length on the TV show Meet The Press. Today is the anniversary of its debut in 1947. That makes it the longest-running TV show in history — and I mean really longest-running, not just that if you try to watch the show it always feels like it’s been droning on forever.
Unfortunately for the environment, the UN only created IDPEEWAC day in 2001. That was thirty years too late to have anything to say about Cannikin, the largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated by the US. The test was on November 6, 1971, and even though it was underground (under one of the Aleutian Islands), it couldn’t have done the environment any good at all. There was a controversy at the time, because the Aleutians are pretty unstable from the standpoint of tremors and volcanic eruptions, and nobody was really sure that a bomb that size wouldn’t trigger an earthquake. In an odd juxtaposition of decisions, Amchitka Island, the site of the test, was made part of the Alaska maritime wildlife refuge, and it’s also still being monitored for radioactivity.
Since there was a six year gap, it’s quite a long shot to ascribe the Kelly Barnes Dam disaster, on November 6, 1977, to the Cannikin nuclear test — but long shots have never stopped me before. The dam was an earthen embankment, which isn’t the most resilient means of construction, and it collapsed after heavy rain. Or you might say it collapsed after a nuclear test and heavy rain. It had been there since 1899, so there was ample evidence to suggest it was pretty secure, but come on, in 1899 there weren’t any nuclear tests. You might object that since the dam was in Georgia, which is a long way from the Aleutian Islands, those events can’t possibly be connected — but still, even that kind of distance is peanuts when we have acronyms like IDPEEWAC, and all three have to do with the exact same day of the year.
And let’s examine the years in question. The dam was built in 1899, and the nuclear test was in 1971. Those years are connected in any number of ways. For one thing, they both started on a Friday. In 1899 there was a huge blizzard in North America, and it snowed as far south as Florida, so they must have had snow in Georgia, too. And as everybody knows, there’s plenty of snow in the Aleutians. So there, another connection. In engineering, Marconi first transmitted a radio signal across the English Channel in 1899.
Now, think back to 1971. If you were sitting at a coffee shop in those days, you couldn’t check your mobile phone, because there weren’t any. But you might, sitting at a table sipping a pumpkin spice latte (if they existed yet), listen to your transistor radio. And 1971, as it happens, is the year Starbucks was founded, leading to hundreds of thousands of pumpkin spice lattes being sipped while enjoying a technology launched in 1899.
But wait, there’s more. In 1899 the Harriman Expedition was launched to explore Alaska (where the Aleutian Islands are!) and in 1971 Apollo 14 was launched to explore the Moon (where the Aleutian Islands aren’t!) And not only that, there was a gold rush in Nome, Alaska in 1899, and 1971 was the year the United Kingdom removed all restrictions on citizens owning gold. And finally, since we started out talking not just about Alaska but also about the environment and war, 1971 was the year the forward-thinking US government — probably as a result of thousands of hours of think-tank research trying to figure out how to have a war that wouldn’t harm the environment — declared war. On drugs. As an aside, it’s somewhat inexplicable that they never won that war since the enemy can’t fight back. But on the other hand, you can’t bomb drugs either, so maybe that explains it. But speaking of drugs, guess what else happened in 1899? Aspirin! Felix Hoffmann patented it and the Bayer company registered the trademark. And since we were talking about the war on drugs, Bayer was the company that registered the trademark Heroin just the previous year. That’s right, they invented heroin before aspirin, and as you can see from the capitalization, they lost the trademarks on both.
But there’s one thing that makes 1899 far superior to 1971. When the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation took effect, nobody — nobody! — referred to it as AJTCN.
