"We live submerged in an ocean of air."

On this day in 1644, Evangelista Torricelli wrote that sentence in a letter. Torricelli's dad was a textile worker who could not afford to send young Evangelista to private school, so the boy was packed off to live with an uncle in Florence. The uncle was a monk, so could get a break on tuition at a Catholic school there. Later, Evangelista went to Rome and became secretary for another monk who got him interested in science (a.k.a. heresy: the teacher had been a student of Galileo). Anyway, in the same 1644 letter Torricelli described an invention of his that he immodestly called the Torricellian tube. Today we know it as the barometer. It measures atmospheric pressure and is still, after all these centuries, a crucial meteorological tool.

For some reason, several submarines in the Italian navy have been named for Torricelli.

Speaking of barometric pressure and the role of science in our everyday lives, here's a poem by Richard Brautigan:

At the California Institute of Technology

I don't care how God-damn smart
these guys are: I'm bored. 

It's been raining like hell all day long
and there's nothing to do. 

               Written January 24, 1967 while poet-in-residence
               at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena

We think that the following Frankie Lee tune is appropriate and we think we do not have to point out the connection because you can surely figure it out for yourself. Enjoy!