1839 – The lightship Key West was returned to its station at the Northwest Channel passage after having undergone repairs.
1923 – Monroe County Sheriff Roland Curry left to retrieve a prisoner from Homestead. The man had been arrested for killing another person in a dispute at Cape Sable on mainland Monroe.
1926 – In the pre-dawn hours at Alberta and Waddell streets in Key West, Deputy U.S. Marshal Lyalle Van Valkenburg encountered seven men unloading bootleg liquor from a skiff into a large Cadillac car. The men made a hasty getaway, and Van Valkenberg fired shots at them, but to no effect.
1944 – The Key West Municipal Hospital on Stock Island was dedicated.
1948 – President Harry Truman was re-elected in an upset over victory Governor Tom Dewey of New York. After his victory President Truman announced that he was going to Key West for a vacation.
1965 – The Coast Guard Cutter McCulloch arrived at Key West with 300 Cuban refugees rescued from small, unsafe boats they had escaped on. The number was the largest since an exodus had begun 30 days earlier.
1998 – Monroe County Commissioners, joined by the mayor of Key West, held a groundbreaking ceremony at the old Gato cigar factory building on Simonton Street, which was to be restored and converted for use as county offices.
Information compiled by the late Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, and Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: 518 Virginia Street and the Gato Cigar Factory in Key West in 1949. From the Louise White Collection. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
