1878 – “Poisoned water” was at the Dry Tortugas. Fish and conch were dying all around Fort Jefferson, and their remains were so prevalent on the beach that the Army was carrying off cartloads for burial.
1899 – Six new cases of yellow fever were reported in Key West.
1917 – Over the previous week the War Department Exemption Board at Key West examined 131 persons for military service, with 36 passed and 95 rejected. Some of those who passed were subjects of Great Britain, Spain, Cuba, and Syria.
1931 – Elena Hoyos Mesa, age 22, died of tuberculosis. She would achieve post-mortem fame when it was discovered that Karl Tanzler (who styled himself Count von Cosel) exhumed her body and lived with it for seven years.
1950 – The Navy announced plans for 1,000 new housing units at Dredgers Key (today’s Sigsbee Park), Trumbo Point and the old Army Barrack (today’s Peary Court). The old and dilapidated housing at the Army Barrack and Rest Beach were torn down.
1968 – Florida officials filed suit in Monroe County Circuit Court to halt salvage operations at a shipwreck site off Islamorada thought to be that of the 1733 galleon San Jose. Florida claimed the site was within state waters, but divers Tom Gurr and Ralph Palladino, who found the wreck, claimed it was 3.5 miles offshore and out of state control.
1989 – Florida Governor Bob Martinez visited Key Largo to snorkel at the site of the grounded freighter Alec Owen Maitland, sitting in five feet of water in the Key Largo National Marine Sanctuary. “This points out very clearly the reasons for our concern over the reef. This is graphic evidence of the need of a safe zone in the shipping lanes south of the reef,” said Martinez. The Maitland was safely freed later in the day.
1994 – Delio Cobo, retired dentist, died at age 83. He had served on the Key West City Commission, the Utility Board and the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority board. He also was Mayor of Key West from 1957 to 1961 and from 1969 to 1971.
Information compiled by the late Tom Hambright, Historian Emeritus, and Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.
Image: Elena Milagro Hoyos. From the DeWolfe and Wood Collection in the Otto Hirzel Scrapbook. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.