On this day, June 20, 1979, US President Jimmy Carter had 32 solar panels put on the White House.
It was organised by Dennis Hayes, who had been one of the co-ordinators of Earth Day in 1970, and then headed of Carter’s Solar Energy Research Institute
There is a brilliant blog post by Oliver Carpenter of the UK Science Museum about this here. See also Scientific American.
Such a pity that the Science Museum is lending its name to the continued extraction of fossil fuels. What can you do?
Why this matters.
It could have been different. That would have required a miracle, it’s true, but it could have been different.
What happened next?
Reagan came in, as a front man for a bunch of goons. The goons trashed the joint. The end.