1904 – Robert Gabriel was elected president of the Roosevelt and Fairbanks Republican Club.
1933 – Pay for workers of the Emergency Relief Council was increased from 18 to 30 cents per hour.
1938 – Sammy Manning, pianist and composer, wrote a symphonic march titled “Key West.”
1941 – Key West gas station owners were agreeable to a government request that they close on Sundays to aid in national defense, but only if they could be assured that all stations would be closed.
1951 – The year’s first case of paralytic polio was reported in the three-year-old child of a Navy family living in the Fort Taylor Trailer Project. Both parents were put into quarantine.
1964 – The Key West Citizen announced it would donate $10 to the library for every day that the sun did not shine on the island.
1967 – Key West Towers, Key West’s largest apartment complex, was completed after three years of planning and 18 months of construction. The three-building complex on South Roosevelt across from Smathers Beach had a third of the 201 units rented.
1970 – The Monroe County Commission took its first look at the new County Master Plan. The comprehensive plan, a 201-page document prepared by Milo Smith and Associates of Tampa, was to be used by the commission as a steering device for at least the next six years.
2003 – The Historical Military Memorial was dedicated at Key West’s Mallory Square. The monument consists of ten stone pedestals with bronze plaques, with a gun-sighting turret from the battleship USS Maine honoring Florida Keys’ military involvement from the 1820s to the present.
2008 – After 10 years of discussion, planning, and construction, Monroe County opened a community park at the end of Sands Road on Big Pine Key.
Information compiled by Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, and Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: Military Memorial at Mallory Square. Photo Tom Hambright. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.