Cuyahoga River Catches Fire (1969)

Famously described in a Time magazine article as a river that “oozes rather than flows” and a waterway in which a person “does not drown but decays,” Ohio’s Cuyahoga River used to be so heavily polluted that it actually caught fire—on more than one occasion. The river fire of 1969, which received national media attention, helped spur the environmental movement of the late 1960s and prompted the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency. When else has the river caught fire? Discuss

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