Earth Day was born in 1970, hatched by former US Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. Here's his account, from a 1998 speech: It had been troubling to me that the critical matter of the state of our environment was simply a non-issue politically The  challenge was to think up some dramatic event that would focus national attention on this subject.  In 1962, I suggested that President Kennedy go on a nationwide conservation tour, spelling out in dramatic language the deteriorating condition of our environment, and proposing an agenda to begin addressing the problem. The president began his tour in the fall of 1963.  Senators Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, Joe Clark, and I accompanied him on the first leg of the trip. For many reasons, including a breaking story on a nuclear missile treaty, the tour failed to make the environment a national political issue. Six years would pass before the idea for Earth Day occurred to me. It was the summer of 1969, and I was on a conservation speaking tour out West. [One stop was in Santa Barbara, where Nelson was stunned by the damage done by the offshore blowout that became the largest oil spill up to that time. It lasted 11 days and blackened beaches.] There was a great deal of turmoil on the college campuses over the Vietnam War, and many colleges held anti-war teach-ins. On a flight to the University of California-Berkeley, I read an article on the teach-ins, and it suddenly occurred to me: Why not have a nationwide teach-in on the environment? In a speech given at Seattle in September, I formally announced that there would be a national environmental teach-in sometime in the spring of 1970. The story ran nationwide.  Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in. MORE>>