Earth Day is an annual event, celebrated on April 22 of each year. On this day, events are held worldwide to demonstrate support for environmental protection. It was first celebrated in 1970, and is now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network and celebrated in more than 193 countries each year.
There is reason behind the title of this celebration as “Earth Day”. It was suggested by a number of people in 1969 and the idea came with “birthday” as Earth day (rhyming word of birthday).
In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be celebrated on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere.
A month later a separate Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970. Nelson was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom award in recognition of his work. Later an organization launched by Denis Hayes in 1970, who took the event international in 1990 and organized it in 141 nations. Numerous communities celebrate Earth Week, an entire week of activities focused on the environmental issues that the world faces
The first Earth Day celebrations took place in two thousand colleges and universities, ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the United States. It brought 20 million Americans out into the spring sunshine for peaceful demonstrations in favor of environmental reform.
It is now observed in 192 countries, and coordinated by the nonprofit Earth Day Network, chaired by the first Earth Day 1970 organizer Denis Hayes. Environmental groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action to change human behavior and provoke policy changes.
On Earth Day 2016, the landmark Paris Agreement was signed by the United States, China, and some 120 other countries. This signing satisfies a key requirement for the entry into force of the historic draft climatic protection treaty adopted by the consensus of 195 nations present at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.