Live life to the fullest. – Ernest Hemingway
1899 – Ernest Hemingway, American author and journalist, Nobel Prize laureate is born.
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Additional works, including three novels, four short story collections, and three non-fiction works, were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.
1902 – Willis Carrier creates the first air conditioner in Buffalo, New York
In Buffalo, New York, on July 17, 1902, in response to a quality problem experienced at the Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing & Publishing Company of Brooklyn, Willis Carrier submitted drawings for what became recognized as the world’s first modern air conditioning system. The 1902 installation marked the birth of air conditioning because of the addition of humidity control, which led to the recognition by authorities in the field that air conditioning must perform four basic functions:
1.) control temperature; 2.) control humidity; 3.) control air circulation and ventilation; 4.) cleanse the air.
1925 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.
The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case in 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he purposely incriminated himself so that the case could have a defendant.
Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 (equivalent to $1,345 in 2015), but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. The trial served its purpose of drawing intense national publicity, as national reporters flocked to Dayton to cover the big-name lawyers who had agreed to represent each side. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes. The trial publicized the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy, which set Modernists, who said evolution was not inconsistent with religion, against Fundamentalists, who said the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The case was thus seen as both a theological contest and a trial on whether modern science regarding the creation–evolution controversy should be taught in schools.
1959 – NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, is launched as a showcase for Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative.
NS Savannah was the first nuclear-powered merchant ship. Built in the late 1950s at a cost of $46.9 million, including a $28.3 million nuclear reactor and fuel core, funded by United States government agencies, Savannah was a demonstration project for the potential use of nuclear energy. Launched on 21 July 1959 and named for SS Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic ocean, she was in service between 1962 and 1972 as one of only four nuclear-powered cargo ships ever built. (Soviet ice-breaker Lenin launched on 5 December 1957, was the first nuclear-powered civil ship.) Savannah has been moored at Pier 13 of the Canton Marine Terminal in Baltimore, Maryland since 2008.
2011 – NASA’s Space Shuttle program ends with the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-135.
The Space Shuttle program was extended several times beyond its originally envisioned 15-year life span because of the delays in building the United States space station in low Earth orbit — a project which eventually evolved into the International Space Station. It was formally scheduled for mandatory retirement in 2010 in accord with the directives President George W. Bush issued on January 14, 2004 in his Vision for Space Exploration.
A $2.5 billion spending provision allowing NASA to fly the Space Shuttle beyond its then-scheduled retirement in 2010 passed the Congress in April 2009, although neither NASA nor the White House requested the one-year extension.
The final Space Shuttle launch was that of Atlantis on July 8, 2011.
2012 – Erden Eruç completes the first solo human-powered circumnavigation of the world.
Erden Eruç, born 1961 (age 53–54), is a Turkish adventurer who became the first person in history to complete an entirely solo and entirely human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth on 21 July 2012 in Bodega Bay, California, United States. The journey had started from Bodega Bay a little more than five years earlier on 10 July 2007. The modes of transport included a rowboat to cross the oceans, a sea kayak for shorelines, a bicycle on the roads and hiking on trails, along with canoes for a few river crossings. The route he followed was 66,299 km (41,196 mi) long, crossed the equator twice and all lines of longitude, and passed over twelve pairs of antipodal points, meeting all the requirements for a true circumnavigation of the globe.
