This day in history - July 17

[seamusTX]

1821 - Spain ceded Florida to the United States.

1944 - An explosion at Port Chicago, California, killed and injured more than 700 people, many of them black enlisted men. The aftermath was a contentious racial episode.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Chicago_disaster" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

1975 - Apollo 18 and Soyuz 19 docked in orbit. It was the first rendezvous of spacecraft of different countries, and the last Apollo mission.

http://history.nasa.gov/apollo/apsoyhist.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- Jim

[USA1]

2009..Walter Cronkite dies at 92

[ELB]

July 17, 1902: An Invention to Beat the Heat, Humidity
1902: With human comfort the last thing on his mind, a young mechanical engineer [Willis Haviland Carrier] completes the schematic drawings for what will be the first successful air-conditioning system.
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009 ... tech_0717/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The article overlooks the, or at least a major key to the success of his air conditioning work -- he brought measurement to A/C design. He figured out how much air conditioning equipment was needed for a given volume of air space in a building. Up to his time, lots of people had worked on cooling systems, but they hadn't really engineered them -- they didn't know how to match the amount of equipment needed to the space that needed to be cooled. Carrier figured that out.

[USA1]

possibly one of the greatest inventions of all time