Yesterday was the fortieth anniversary of the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire.  I had always assumed that fire was notable because it marked the peak of an era of careless industrial polluting, but the truth is apparently that the fire was notable because it demonstrated the persistence of an era that Americans thought they had left behind:

While the Cuyahoga River was hopelessly polluted in 1969, river fires by this point were largely a thing of the past. Indeed, river fires had once been common on the Cuyahoga and other industrialized rivers. Throughout the late 19th and 20th century, combustible material on industrialized rivers ignited somewhat frequently. By 1969, this problem had been largely solved. By that time, the Cuyahoga River had not burned in over 15 years, and the once-common problem of river fires had been largely forgotten. Water pollution remained a serious concern, but not because rivers threatened to burn.

Even the photos often attributed to the 1969 fire are actually of previous fires, as the 1969 fire was put out before photographers arrived.  How quickly we have forgotten that our rivers used to burn.