In the 1960s, America had a pollution problem. In Los Angeles, smog turned the sky brown. People coughed and stayed indoors on bad days. In Cleveland, Ohio, the Cuyahoga River was so full of industrial waste that it caught fire in 1969. Oil spills along the coast of California killed thousands of seabirds and coated beaches in black sludge. Every region of the country faced its own type of environmental damage. A senator from Wisconsin named Gaylord Nelson had an idea. He wanted people everywhere to speak up on the same day. On April 22, 1970, about 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day. In New York City, part of Fifth Avenue was closed to cars. In Philadelphia, students cleaned up rivers. In San Francisco, people planted trees. Farmers in the Midwest talked about protecting their soil from chemicals. The message was the same from coast to coast: people wanted cleaner air, cleaner water, and healthier land. The government listened. Within months, the Environmental Protection Agency was created. New laws made it illegal for factories to dump waste into rivers. Earth Day showed that when people across a whole country demand change, it can happen fast.