1942 - Environment

Environment

Camp David outside Thurmont, Md., has its beginnings in the Shangri-La retreat built for President Roosevelt on a 134-acre site cleared 3 years ago in the Catoctin Mountain Park, a 90-minute drive from the White House. Initially named for the Tibetan paradise in James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon, the area will be enlarged to 200 acres, it will be surrounded by maximum-security fencing, and when Gen. Eisenhower becomes president in 1953 he will rename the hideaway after a grandson; later presidents will use Camp David to varying degrees, sometimes for summit conferences.

Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Co. acquires Love Canal north of Niagara Falls from the Niagara Power and Development Co. Begun in 1892 by entrepreneur William T. Love to divert water from the upper Niagara River for an electric power plant, it was never completed; the city of Niagara Falls bought it at public auction in 1920 to use as a municipal landfill, Hooker will use it as a dump for nearly 22,000 tons of chemical waste that will include benzylchlorides, hexachlorocylohexanes, chlorobenzenes, dodecyl, and sodium sulfides, creating dikes across the canal to impound areas of water (see 1953).

An earthquake in Turkey November 26 registers 7.6 on the Richter scale and leaves an estimated 4,000 dead; a second quake December 20 registers 7.3 and kills somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 Turks.