Key West Electric city bus at the corner of Fleming and Margaret streets
1858 – The Fort Jefferson Lighthouse was first lighted.
1920 – Two large sheds filled with cedar logs for the manufacture of cigar boxes burned at the Key West Box Factory at Caroline and William Streets. Also lost in the blaze was the tugboat Standard, which was on the ways nearby. Damages were estimated at $60,000.
1926 – The long-running Key West trolley service was suspended, and the electric streetcars were replaced by six new motor buses. Removal of the trolley tracks was to begin within a week, and it was anticipated the changes would spur the paving of Duval Street.
1932 – The Key West Citizen, in a front-page editorial, reported to the citizens of Key West that the paper was retrenching because of lost income due to the Great Depression.
1936 – Emery Lowe Pierce, director of the Key West Aquarium, said that during the previous month 500,000 baby crawfish had been released in Keys waters via the facility’s propagation program.
1947 – The Key West City Commission vetoed the purchase of two-way radios for the city’s police cars. “I have made a light canvass of the people and find they do not want police car radios,” said Commissioner Louis Carbonell.
1963 – Tom O. Watkins was sworn in as the first Public Defender for Monroe County.
1982 – The United States Supreme Court denied the State of Florida’s claim to 25 percent of the Spanish treasure from the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, found and raised by Mel Fisher.
1993 – Stock Island resident Ricky Hoddinott was shot and wounded by Cuban Coast Guardsmen after they spotted him in his speedboat transporting people from the coastal Cuban city of Cojimar. Hoddinott was hospitalized in Havana and expected to recover, but three Cubans with him were killed.
Information compiled by Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, and Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: The Key West Electric City bus at the corner of Fleming and Margaret Streets circa 1920. Gift Eddie Strunk. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.