June 6

Winifred Fryzel's 4th grade class at May Sands School in Key West, 1956-1957.

1823 – The doctors had fallen ill at Key West, and Commodore David Porter wrote to the Secretary of the Navy, “We are greatly in want of medical aid on this station…. I beg, sir, that our situation may be taken into consideration, and, as the sickly season is fast approaching, I hope that several surgeon’s mates may be sent to us.”

1893 – Key West had no ice. “The ice famine is raging, and if the vessel laden with ice does not arrive soon, the inhabitants of this city will be put to much trouble and inconvenience. Now is the time Key West feels the need of an ice factory,” wrote the Daily Equator-Democrat newspaper.

1943 – Memorial services were held at the Fleming Street Methodist Church for Frank L. Spencer, the first Key West inductee to die in World War II. He was killed in North Africa on April 23.

1956 – The Monroe County School Board agreed to name a new elementary school on United Street May Sands Elementary School, the new high school on Flagler Avenue Key West High School, and the junior high school going into the old high school building on White Street Memorial Junior High School.

1991 – The Kmart corporation announced that a new 80,400-square-foot Kmart discount department store was planned for the former Ames store location at 2928 N. Roosevelt Boulevard in Key West. 

2010 – The National Park Service was planning for a worst-case scenario, in which oil gushing from the damaged Deepwater Horizon well in the northern Gulf of Mexico reached the Dry Tortugas.

Information compiled by Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.

Image: Winifred Fryzel's 4th grade class at May Sands School in Key West, 1956-1957. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.