In other terms, West Virginia’s 2020 population size was 8.3% of Florida’s. As someone that grew up in Florida most of their life, I find that the culture has made a pronounced change since my childhood.
When did air conditioning become a thing?
1901, designed to lower humidity in a print shop to keep the moisture from affecting the paper. Then to textile mills and other manufacturing facilities.
I think it was installed in a residence in 1915 for the first time, then in 1931 the window unit was invented. They became available for cars in 1932, but the first factory units didn’t come out until 1939 from Packard.
If you don’t count only powered AC, passive air conditioning methods have existed as long as we’ve been building structures. There has been a big push towards these passive cooling methods again.
The most populous city in Florida for a lot of the 19th century was Key West, which is crazy to think about compared to today.
The thing about Florida is that its development mirrors a lot of western states more as massive public works projects made larger and larger pieces of Florida habitable. Then, over the, the touristy bits converted to actual cities with actual economies.
Fun fact! In April 1982, Key West seceded from the US and established the Conch Republic when the Feds started enforcing a roadblock that made travel between the Keys and the mainland a pain in the butt.
In addition to air conditioning becoming widespread, Walt Disney World opened in 1971. There was very little in Orlando prior to that due to not being on the coast - it’s miserably hot and doesn’t get the afternoon breeze off the ocean like costal cities.
Yeah, yeah, air conditioning. Coal has also tanked. That’s kind of a thing.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=peter+santenello+west+virginia
Watch some of that if you’re brave enough to learn about your fellow Americans. Or just call them all racists, because that’s easy and scores fake points.
I’ve watched a few of his videos and they’ve all been very interesting. I’d recommend some of his coverage on Native American/Indian issues.
He also did good job showing the border situation from the lenses of people from every side of it (migrants, cartel coyotes, local sheriffs, & cities hosting the migrants). It highlights how dogmatism of politicians is hurting ordinary people.
