1842 – The U.S. mail packet boat Hayne advertised passage from Charleston, South Carolina, to Indian Key for $20, Key West for $25, and Havana for $40.
1863 – The Fort Jefferson post returns showed the command had 572 men, including 214 prisoners.
1922 – The Rex Ingraham moving picture company left Key West for Havana, after having spent many days on the island. Alice Terry, star of their latest production, “Where the Pavement Ends,” said she enjoyed Key West very much and expected to return.
1937 – President Franklin Roosevelt interrupted his Florida fishing vacation to visit the Dry Tortugas on the yacht Potomac.
1946 – To promote their new style of Cuban mix sandwich, the Farola restaurant dropped the first one ever made by parachute from an airplane over Bayview Park. A throng of children gathered to try their luck at catching it. Wayne McFarland, a 12-year-old Virginia Street resident, overcame the scramble and caught the battered but intact prize.
1963 – The Gallery Lounge Tavern, Murray Singer owner, was located 224 Duval Street.
1970 – Key West police reported that 36 businesses, homes, cars, and motel rooms had been burgled over the weekend. Since eight of the businesses were doctors’ and dentists’ offices, police were investigating the transient hippie community because of their known affinity for drugs.
2008 – High school students from Colorado raised $34,000 for the Teens4Oceans program to install two underwater cameras on the old Bahia Honda bridge. The devices were intended to live-stream undersea views of Bahia Honda Channel across the world via the internet.
Information compiled by the late Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, and Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: The Gallery Lounge at 224 Duval Street in the mid-1960s. Photo from the Monroe County Property Appraiser’s office. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center