Short answers, pulled from the story.
The first commercial shipment of frozen meat from New Zealand to London occurred on the 15th of February 1882. This voyage was commissioned by William Soltau Davidson and marked the beginning of a global meat trade that reshaped economies and diets.
William Cullen created the first small refrigerating machine that used diethyl ether to produce ice in 1855. This technology remained a laboratory curiosity for decades before inventors like James Harrison and John Gorrie built commercial systems in the 1870s.
Frigidaire synthesized Freon, a chlorofluorocarbon that was safer and cheaper, in 1930. This development dropped the price of a refrigerator from 275 dollars to 154 dollars and allowed ownership to exceed 50 percent of American households by 1940.
Benjamin Franklin and chemist John Hadley conducted their experiment on rapid cooling in 1758. They confirmed that the evaporation of highly volatile liquids could drive down the temperature of an object past the freezing point of water.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the executive order for the Rural Electrification Administration on the 11th of May 1935. This order provided loans to fund electric infrastructure in rural areas, allowing 300,000 people to receive power in their homes within a few years.
The Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987 to curtail the use of synthetic refrigerants like Freon. These refrigerants were found in the 1970s to be reacting with atmospheric ozone, leading to their regulation to protect against solar ultraviolet radiation.