Just a few years ago.
Used to take beer cans, fill them 3/4 full of water.
put as many as we could fit in a cardboard box.
Take them to the refectory, (Cafeteria, in non Catholic speak),
for the Friday evening meal.
(Cute young gal working their would take them put them in the freezer),
Sat morning pick them up, set the box in the dorm room,
put a fan on one side.
Coolest room on the floor.
But of course, by evening, no one their, ‘cared’, if the Ice had melted.
Those of you down south. What is a, “Swamp Cooler”