Today in Keys History – July 21, 2024
1856 – A sailor admitted to the Key West Marine Hospital three weeks earlier for tuberculosis supposedly died of yellow fever contracted there. “He would have recovered could he have been restrained from committing some imprudencies that were the real cause of his death,” wrote a correspondent.
1929 – A farewell dinner was held at the town of Perky for workmen who were leaving for an extended vacation. Mr. R.C. Perky, founder and mayor of the small Sugarloaf Key community, served as toastmaster and handed out gag prizes, “which kept the company in uproarious laughter.”
1942 – The merchant vessel William C. Bryant was damaged 44 miles southwest of Key West by the German submarine U-84.
1954 – Ed Fisher set an underwater endurance record by scuba diving for 24 hours and two minutes in 30 feet of water off Key Largo. Fisher packed raw fish and candy to stave off hunger. When the 24-year-old emerged, his skin was blue and wrinkled, and he complained of a headache.
1961 – Mrs. Sue Marvin Harwell Moore, 86-year-old pioneer schoolteacher of the Florida Keys, died in Coral Gables. Mrs. Moore first taught in a small one-room school in Marathon.
1974 – As part of a study of the impact of sportfishermen on the spiny lobster population, the harvest of lobster within the 47,000-acre Fort Jefferson National Monument was ordered closed at the end of the month.
Information compiled by Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: An aerial view of the small community of Perky on Sugarloaf Key, ca. 1930. Photo gift John Simmons. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.