Agustin Parla’s plane over Morro Castle in 1913.
1865 – Confederate scientific advisor Richard Sears McCulloh was captured at Cape Sable on mainland Monroe County. McCulloh, formerly a professor at Columbia University, had defected to the South in 1863. He developed an incendiary chemical device that he intended to use against the U.S. Congress, but the war ended before he could do so. McCulloh was with Confederate Senator Thomas A. Harris of Missouri and five other rebel fugitives, all intending to escape by boat to Cuba.
1871 – W.H. Heiss, General Superintendent of the International Ocean Telegraph Cable Company, announced the completion of a new undersea cable between Punta Rassa, near Fort Myers, and Key West.
1903 – Fred Ewert was arrested for the brutal murder of Frank Whitaker.
1913 – Agustin Orduan Parla, a Key West native, flew his seaplane to Cuba, becoming the second man to fly across the Florida Straits.
1926 – Roland Curry, sheriff of Monroe County, who had been injured two days before when he was caught between a capsized boat and the rocks on the shore of the Bahama Islands, died at his residence in the jail building.
1934 – Shortly after 6 p.m., a peculiar-looking haze could be seen about three miles above the horizon and many Key Westers saw a mirage of Havana “just as though it was a moving picture.” It was reported that buildings such as the Morro Castle and the presidential palace could be clearly seen, along with pedestrians and moving vehicles in the streets.
1937 – One hundred and sixty-seven residents living between Card Sound and the Matecumbe Keys petitioned the Monroe County Commission for protection against lime grove trespassers and vagrants who were frequenting the Upper Keys.
1949 – General Eurico Gaspar Dutra, President of Brazil, departed Key West to meet with President Truman in Washington.
1955 – The Navy announced plans to build 83 housing units at the end of United Street on land leased to Monroe County and used as Ocean View Park, the segregated beach for Key West’s Black community.
1975 – Florida Keys Community College gave the Monroe County School Board 8.5 acres of land to be used to build Gerald Adams Elementary School.
1991 – Queen Elizabeth II of England visited the Fort Jefferson National Monument at the Dry Tortugas where she was welcomed by Monroe County Mayor and “Queen Conch” Wilhelmina Harvey.
Information compiled by Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, and Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: Augustin Parla’s plane over Morro Castle in May 1913. From the Ida Woodward Collection. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.