1818 – The brig Sally, sailing from Rhode Island to Havana via Savannah, was wrecked on the Florida Reef. The crew and cargo were saved and carried to Nassau, but the vessel was lost.
1923 – Henry L. James, manager of the Big Pine Key shark-skinning plant, announced that the installation of new equipment was complete, which would speed the facility’s work and allow larger and more frequent shipments of product to be sent northward.
1929 – U.S. Navy tests of the Momsen Lung conducted on the submarine S-4 near Smith Shoals ended and were declared a success with men able to escape from the submarine on the bottom using the lung.
1935 – William Ellsworth, manager of Key West’s First Title and Guarantee Company, expected that over one million acres would be available for a proposed Everglades National Park.
1945 – Members of the Key West Hotel Association planned to spend over $300,00 to improve their facilities in anticipation of a post-war boom. “We are convinced that Key West will become much more of a tourist town than ever after the European War,” said Gertrude Laubscher, secretary.
1950 – The newly discovered shrimp beds near the western Keys were quickly proving quite lucrative. There were now 150 boats operating out of Key West, and they each averaged 3,500 – 4,000 pounds of shrimp per run, which they sold at 50 cents per pound.
1952 – Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company began installing a new dial telephone system in Key West.
1953 – William “Billy” Freeman entered the race for the second district seat of the Monroe County School Board. Freeman would be running against Gerald Adams.
1953 – The Jesston Corporation sold 330 acres of the new Marathon Beach area to Stanley Switlik for a reported price of $200,000.
1954 – Forty private planes left Key West for Havana. The planes, from all over the U.S. and part of the Sportsman Pilots Association, carried 100 pilots and their families.
1972 – Ground was broken on an 18-acre site behind Searstown for a retirement center being developed by the Aldersgate Foundation, Inc.
Information compiled by Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, and Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: Workers at the Big Pine Key Ocean Leather Shark Company circa 1920. John Harold Sands Jr. collection. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.