1825 – An officer on board the USS John Adams at Key West wrote that an especially malignant yellow fever was rampant at the island, and two or three people were dying every day.
1851 – The steamer Hetzel of the U.S. Coast Survey was preparing to leave Key West after being ordered north. The crew of Hetzel had been engaged in the survey of Key West Harbor and had to this date completed 8,000 triangulations and 40,000 soundings of the area.
1853 – A week of rain had inundated the salt works and ponds with fresh water and dissolved a crop of salt that was about to be raked, dried, and harvested.
1918 – Private Arthur B. Sawyer, U.S. Marine Corps, was killed in action in France. He was the first Key Wester to die in battle in World War I.
1927 – The first official map of the Overseas Highway was published in the Atlantic Coastal Highway Association’s 24-page folder of maps of the Atlantic Coastal Highway running from Calais, Maine, to Key West.
1928 – John F. Lovell of Lovell Bus Lines predicted it would require 40 buses to handle the crowds traveling between Key West and Miami in the upcoming fall and winter.
1935 – The Bureau of Fisheries reported that in 1934 Monroe County produced 4,706,700 pounds of fish valued at $156,733. The sponge catch was 87,200 pounds valued at $87,502.
1958 – Famed band leader Guy Lombardo announced he was buying the Shamrock Restaurant and Key Colony Beach Club from Phil Sadowski.
1966 – The eye of Hurricane Alma passed 48 miles west of the city. The hurricane caused some flooding and minor wind damage in Key West.
1983 – Henry C. “Booty” Singleton, the man who had built a multi-million dollar shrimp processing industry and owned most of the Key West Bight, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Tampa.
Information compiled by Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, and Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: Key West resident Arthur Sawyer, who was killed in action during World War I in France on June 8, 1918. Photo Honor Roll. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.