On this day in ...... 1907, Rachel Carson (right) was born "in the rural river town of Springdale, Pennsylvania." Inheriting from her mother "a life-long love of nature," she studied after college at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, and in 1932 received a master's degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University. As a writer on nature and wildlife she "rose to become Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service" in 1936. She is best know for her book Silent Spring (1962), which took on agribusiness and the government in exposing how the use of synthetic-chemical pesticides harmed the natural environment. Carson died from breast cancer in 1964.
... 1996, in Moscow, Russian President Boris Yeltsin entered a ceasefire agreement with Chechnya's rebel leader, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. The accord was intended to bring an end to 17
months of fighting in the southwestern province of the Russian Federation. But "sporadic violence continues" to this day.
