CounterSpill

Brooklyn, N.Y. offers a variety of cultural pitstops for any looking to take in America's history. However, beneath the city lies an insidious landmark that may catch even the most experienced New Yorker by surprise -- a large plume of oil that is considered to be one of the largest spills in U.S. history. 

For more than 60 years, those millions of gallons of fossil fuel have been entangled in political and legislative brawls that have left much of the oil product uncollected and unstudied. 

Since oil operations began, 546 million gallons of oil have spilled into Nigeria's Niger Delta. 

That's the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez Disaster happening every year for nearly 50 years. 

The most controversial spills come from pipeline blasts. Over the past two decades, at least a dozen pipeline disasters have killed thousands in Nigeria. 

During the post-WWII nuclear arms race, nations worldwide amped up their nuclear energy production to use not only for power, but for weapons as well. Great Britain joined the trend by constructing the Windscale power plant as an answer to the United States' Hanford reactor in Benton County, Wash., which provided the plutonium for the world's first atomic test in 1945. 

On April 5, 2010, an explosion took place at Massey Energy Co.'s Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, W. Va. The mine was operated by Performance Coal Company, a Massey Energy subsidiary.

Mine rescue procedures began immediately. Although 25 bodies were recovered in the first hours, the rescue workers had unknowingly walked past the bodies of four missing men for four days because of the amount of smoke, debris and ash. 

After years of searching for oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Gulf Oil Corp. and Texaco Petroleum Company began major shipments of oil from the region in 1972, when the Trans-Ecuadorian pipeline was completed.

Just over a month after Mexico's Ixtoc Oil Spill, the collision of two supertankers in the Caribbean created one of the largest oil spills ever recorded. But if the name doesn't ring a bell, you're not alone. 

Because the public's focus was elsewhere, much of what occurred washed away with the waves.