1898 – The U.S. Battleship Maine was destroyed by an explosion in Havana Harbor.
1925 – John Phillip Sousa, the famous march king, arrived from Havana with his wife and daughter. They were guests at the Hotel Casa Marina.
1927 – The Overseas Highway was completed on Sugarloaf Key, which then connected the road across most of the Lower Keys, from Summerland Key to Key West.
1934 – The Coconuts defeated the Pelicans at Key West’s Colored Ball Park. This put the Coconuts into playoff against the Tigers for the championship of the city’s Colored Baseball League.
1940 – The Key West City Council was equally divided in a debate about whether to reduce delinquent taxes from before 1936 by 30 percent.
1954 – The Key West City Commission granted Joe Sirugo a 20-year lease on waterfront land at the north end of Simonton Street from where he planned to operate an auto ferry to Havana. Sirugo was required have the ferry in operation by the end of the year, or the lease would be null and void.
1957 – Humorist S.J. Perelman was vacationing in Key West.
1985 – The gun sight hood from the Battleship Maine that had been at Harris School since it was given to Key West was moved to the new Key West Post Office on Whitehead Street and rededicated.
1995 – The new 19,999 square foot terminal at Marathon Airport opened. The terminal was part of a $7.4 million airport upgrade.
1998 – A crowd of more than 500 gathered at the Key West Cemetery to rededicate the Battleship Plot that had been completed restoration to mark the sinking of the USS Maine 100 years before in Havana.
2007 – County officials and hundreds of local residents gathered at the Marathon Airport to welcome a 40-passenger Delta Airlines jet from Atlanta, the first commercial air service to the Middle Keys since 2000.
Information compiled by Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, and Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: Moving rock for surfacing the first highway on the east side of Summerland Key. March 1927. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.