1946 – The Aerovias Q airlines building at Meacham Airfield in Key West was broken into overnight and most of its furnishing – chairs, rugs, lamps, and fans – were stolen. The theft was a setback for the Cuba-based airline’s Key West operation, which had just opened.

1940 – Karl Tanzler, aka Von Cosel, was arrested when it was discovered that he had been living for years with the corpse of Elena Hoyos Mesa. She had been a tuberculosis patient at the Marine Hospital where Tanzler worked as an X-ray technician, and he became obsessed with her. Elena died in 1931 and was buried in the Key West cemetery; two years later Tanzler stole her body and took it home.

1951 – Helicopter Scouting Squadron HS-1, led by Commander Joseph T. Watson, was commissioned in ceremonies held at the Seaplane Base in Key West. It was the first HS squadron in the Navy.

1935 – The Works Progress Administration offered to help rebuild and repair the hurricane-damaged highway ferry slips at Lower Matecumbe Key if Monroe County would contribute $12,000 toward the effort. County officials responded that they had no money.

1931 – Capt. Matthew Gates brought a 19-foot sawfish and six nurse sharks into the local Key West “shark camp.” Eddie Saunders topped Gates, though, with a catch of 31 sharks.

1998 – Hurricane Georges, a category three hurricane, swept across Key West and the lower Florida Keys causing considerable damage. Key West’s iconic Houseboat Row was devastated by the storm.

1976 – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service established a protected “critical habitat” for the endangered American crocodile in the Everglades and northern Florida Keys. There were fewer than 10 breeding females known in the U.S., all of which lived in the designated area.

1958 – The submarine USS Grenadier (SS-525) arrived at Key West, the last of five to reach the Naval Station in the past two months. The others were the Spikefish (SS-404), Bergall (SS-320), Atule (SS-403) and Tirante (SS-420). Over 400 men were attached to the five subs, roughly half of whom had families they planned to bring to the island.

1937 – A plan was approved to remove WPA highway workers from the Upper Keys and bring them to Key West in case of a hurricane. Coast Guard patrol boats were to be used to move the men to No Name Key where they would then be taken to Key West by automobile.

1931 – Two new local baseball leagues were organized at Key West. One, a group of six teams, would start immediately at the Harris School field. The other league planned to play at night at Bayview Park, and, pending the installation of lights, would begin their season on October 1.

1935 – A tally of casualties from the Upper Keys hurricane showed 285 veterans employed as bridge workers were dead or missing, and 101 were injured and hospitalized. Of civilian residents, 125 were dead, and 151 were hospitalized.

1946 – In a special meeting, Key West city commissioners authorized the purchase of the Sweeny beachfront property at the south end of Duval Street for $37,000. The property was to be used as a bathing beach and to provide recreational facilities for the city.

1986 – The Truman Annex ex-Navy base in Key West sold at government auction for $17.25 million to Massachusetts resident Pritam Singh. The 103 acres on Key West and Tank Island were initially offered to the City of Key West, but 12 years of negotiations failed to produce a satisfactory deal.

1986 – The Key West Citizen announced it was building new headquarters on Northside Drive, which would allow the newspaper to modernize and “leap forward into the computer age.” The Citizen planned to make the move from its longtime 515 Greene Street address in approximately one year.

1956 – The Tradewinds Restaurant in the pre-Civil War era Caroline Lowe House at the corner of Duval and Caroline streets in Key West was gutted by fire and had to be torn down. The blaze was set by an arsonist who destroyed several significant Key West buildings before he was caught.

1946 – Marathon was growing rapidly: Tourist accommodations were fully booked for the upcoming season, and “draglines, graders, rollers, bulldozers, and trucks were busy clearing ground for further development.”

1986 – Spurred by overwhelming neighborhood opposition to the plan, the Key West City Commission denied a request for the conversion of the former St. Stephen Church building at 330 Julia Street into a restaurant.

1935 – The most intense hurricane to make landfall in the United States struck the Upper Keys. The category five storm had a barometer reading of 26.35, winds estimated at around 200 mph, and tides 18 to 20 feet above normal. The storm killed nearly 400 people, including many WW I veterans working on new highway bridges, and the destruction put the financially troubled Overseas Railroad out of business.

1927 – Two men, one from Bulgaria and one from Yugoslavia, were pulled from a fish oil tanker car carried on a ferry from Havana to Key West. The men were barely alive and covered in oily slime after having stowed away in the airtight tank for 12 hours.

1936 – Prompted by the hurricane that struck the Upper Keys the previous September, a representative for the Works Progress Administration was in Key West to survey school buildings, City Hall, and the County Courthouse in preparation for making them more storm resistant.