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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

2009..Walter Cronkite dies at 92

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.

possibly one of the greatest inventions of all time