Friday, July 20, 1934

We ironed. It sure was hot! Rita Mae, Olive and Warren, Mr. Constable and Raymond and Mother and Daddy and I had fish at Joe's.

Willis Haviland Carrier (November 26, 1876 – October 6, 1950)

Carrier was an American engineer and inventor, most widely known as the man who invented modern air conditioning. 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.

After several more years of refinement and field testing, on January 2, 1906, Carrier was granted U.S. patent No. 808897 on his invention, which he called an "Apparatus for Treating Air," the world's first spray-type air conditioning equipment. It was designed to humidify or dehumidify air, heating water for the first and cooling it for the second.

And the rest, as they say, is history . . .

Thursday, July 19, 1934

Washed clothes. Us girls went after the cows. Went down to Olive and Warren's. We played on the swings.

Buster Keaton (1895-1966)

Born in Piqua, Kansas, Keaton was confined to a sanitarium in 1934 for
alcoholism. He escaped his straitjacket using a secret learned from the magician Harry Houdini. Keaton later gained control of his drinking. 





Thursday, July 20, 1933

I read some magazines and sewed on the machine. Daddy went over to Raiferts' to play pinochle. Mother was sick.

Red Crown Tavern and Tourist Court
Platte County, Missouri

Built in 1931 by Parkville, Missouri, banker and developer Emmett Breen
at the junction of US 71 and Route 59 (now 1-435), the Red Crown was the site
of the July 20, 1933 gun battle between lawmen and outlaws Bonnie and Clyde and
three members of their gang. The outlaws made their escape, but would be tracked down
and cornered four days later near Dexter, Iowa, and engaged by another posse.

Uncharacteristically, Clyde Barrow was looking for a place the gang might hole up for
several nights. It was his usual practice to keep moving and never spend more than one
night in any given spot, but the previous weeks had been difficult. Bonnie had been badly
burned in a car wreck and two gang members had bungled a robbery and killed a town marshal.
With the police after them, they needed a place to stay that was out of the way. Unfortunately
for the gang, the clerk was suspicious of them from the beginning of their stay, and soon the
sheriff and numerous other lawmen descended on the two rooms at the back of the Red Crown.

All five members of the gang got away, but not without consequence. Blanche and Buck Barrow
got the worst of the shootout: his head wound would prove mortal, and flying glass would leave
 her blind in her left eye. Buck died in Iowa and Blanche was captured there. As for Bonnie and Clyde
and W.D. Jones,they got away again (on foot this time) to rob and fight another day.

(The shootout at the Red Crown was depicted in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, though the
sign on the motel in the movie reads "Platte City, Iowa," not Missouri.)