From Florida to Cuba

1913 – Domingo Rosillo del Toro, a Cuban Armed Forces pilot, flew a Blériot Type XI monoplane from Key West to Havana on this date, the first person to accomplish the international flight. He attempted the flight in order to win a $10,000 prize offered by the Cuban government. The flight took over two hours in the small open-cockpit plane across the Florida Straits, a route that would later become heavily traversed by tourists traveling by air to and from Cuba in the early half of the 20^th century. Rosillo’s copilot was a small monkey that someone handed him for good luck minutes before leaving Key West. Rosillo would go on to fly in both Spain and Cuba where he died in 1957.