The dredge at work in Key West Harbor in 1966.
1888 – A carrier pigeon message service was established by the signal office at Key West. The purpose of the new service was to bring the island into better communication with The Bahamas. General Greely ordered the necessary loft fixtures and training baskets for 500 birds.
1890 – Commodore Ralph Monroe arrived at Key West from Miami on his yacht Eaglette.
1900 – The fiend who had been throwing acid on unsuspecting Key West women over the previous week was apprehended. Forty-year-old Antonio Signeros’ latest attack was witnessed by four boys who then gave authorities his location. Signeros already had a reputation for peeping in windows and other improper behavior.
1907 – The Key West Chamber of Commerce voted to employ counsel to prosecute firms using the Key West name on boxes of cigars not made in the city.
1907 – Oscar B. Hahn was killed in an accident on the Navy tug Osceola. He was buried in the Battleship Maine Plot in the Key West City Cemetery.
1909 – Mr. Van Vleck, fishing with Captain Albert Hiembile, made his final trip of the winter. During the winter he made 57 trips to the Card Sound Banks and caught 222 Bonefish, the largest of which was 10 1/4 pounds.
1912 – The battleship USS Nebraska anchored safely in Key West Harbor. There it took on 1,100 tons of coal while waiting on a train to bring 150 Marines for embarkation.
1923 – The Paul Boysen Development company said that dynamite had arrived for blasting operations to create a new yacht basin along Key West’s North Beach. It was expected to take 10 months to dredge the 300-foot-wide, 14-foot-deep basin.
1931 – Key West baseball fans met at the San Carlos theater to organize a drive to raise enough money to operate a local team in the Florida league.
1958 – Plantation Key was the base of operations for filming the feature movie “Secret Cargo.”
1961 – Pedro Aguilar baseball field on Kennedy Drive was dedicated, and Mayor Delio Cobo threw out the first ball to launch the newly organized Junior Major League.
1967 – Governor Claude Kirk appointed Robert S. Appleton as Monroe County Criminal Court Judge to the vacant judgeship created by the death of Judge J.Y. Porter.
2013 – Key Westers were debating whether the city should order an Army Corps of Engineers study of the potential impacts of widening a portion of the main ship channel to accommodate larger cruise ships.
Information compiled by Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, and Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: The dredge at work in Key West Harbor in 1966. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.