Minamata was a small coastal town of 12000 people in Japan: In 1908 a big fertilizer plant was established there and soon it developed into a big unit. From 1956 many people were suffering from a kind of serious nervous disease known as Minamata disease. It was discovered that the disease was due to eating of sea food polluted with mercury compound. This is known as Minamata disease.
As for the Bhopal tragedy, on the night of December 2, 1984, gas leaked from a Union Carbide plant. Few thousand people were killed and many more were crippled and blinded.
The Chernobyl tragedy, occured in 1986 in Russia. There took place an explosion which carried harmful radio-active isotopes far and wide. Radioactive strontium polluted water and plants which entered the bodies of animals such as cows. The milk was polluted which endangered the health of thousands of people.