Florida Frontiers

1935 – A $5,000,000 allocation for the cross-Florida ship canal was announced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on this date. The canal would have connected the Atlantic Ocean with the Gulf of Mexico, which opponents argued would cut down on shipping costs and would be safer than traveling through the Florida Straits. Although the idea of a cross peninsular canal was first introduced as early as the 16^th century, it was not until President Roosevelt allocated funds as an economic recovery project that any real construction began.

The infamous “Labor Day” hurricane made landfall near Craig Key in the Florida Keys on this date. It was the third most intense Atlantic hurricane on record, making landfall as a Category 5 storm with winds exceeding 156 mph. A 10-car evacuation train sent from Homestead carrying many WWI veterans who had been working in the Keys with the Civilian Conservation Corps was swept off the tracks by storm surge on Upper Matecumbe Key, killing many of them. Nearly 500 deaths were attributed to the storm, although the actual number was probably much higher.

 William “Uncle Bill” Lundy died at the purported age of 109 in Crestview, Okaloosa County on this date. Lundy claimed to be one of the last surviving Confederate veterans of the Civil War, and the last Civil War veteran in Florida. His claimed birthdate and place was January 18^th, 1848 in Pike County Alabama. According to Lundy, he served with the 4^th Alabama Calvary Regiment, joining at the age of 16 in 1865, just before the end of the war.

1963 – Governor Farris Bryant signed State Senate Bill No. 125 creating Florida Technological University in east Orlando on this date. Now known as the University of Central Florida, the school’s humble beginnings in the early 1960s as a technological university aimed at providing access to higher education to serve Florida’s burgeoning space industry seems far from the school’s current status as the second largest university by total enrollment in the country.

1906 - Elizabeth Hutchinson Broward, eighth child of Governor and Mrs. Napoleon Broward, became the first child born to a sitting governor in the State of Florida on this date. She was born in the Brown House on Monroe Street in Tallahassee. The eventual demolition of the Brown house gave birth to the modern preservation movement in Tallahassee.

1984: The space shuttle Discovery launched from Kennedy Space Center on its first mission (41-D), to deploy three communications satellites. Since that inaugural flight, Discovery flew 149 million miles in 39 missions, completed 5,830 orbits, and spent 365 days in orbit in over 27 years. Discovery flew more flights than any other Orbiter Shuttle. In 1990, Discovery carried the Hubble Space Telescope into space, and provided both the second and third Hubble servicing missions in 1997 and 1999.

1919 – Liberty County Sheriff Jay Lemuel (Bunk) Forehand was shot and killed in Gadsden County on this date. Forehand was born in Cove Mills in 1875. On August 29, 1919, the sheriff needed to make the arrest of a man by the name of Charlie Davis for attempted murder and rape in Liberty County. When Forehand left his office, his deputy, a man by the name of Mr. Storey, accompanied him. They traveled over what's now State Road 65. Near the county line, Forehand spotted Davis, armed with a single-barreled shotgun.

1965 – The United States Post office issued a 5-cent stamp commemorating the 400th anniversary of the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the new world; St. Augustine. The stamp was placed on sale at the Saint Augustine post office. A stamp identical in design, except for the necessary differences in the caption and denomination, was released simultaneously in Spain. Designed by Brook Temple, the stamp depicts a Spanish explorer with Spain's royal banner in the background.

1960 – Ax Handle Saturday in Jacksonville occurred on this date. Black Sit-ins began two weeks earlier when students asked to be served at the segregated lunch counter at Woolworths, Morrison's Cafeteria and other eateries in the city. They were denied service and kicked, spit at and addressed with racial slurs. This came to a head on "Ax Handle Saturday” when a group of 200 middle aged and older white men (allegedly some were also members of the Ku Klux Klan) gathered in Hemming Park armed with baseball bats and ax handles. They attacked the protesters conducting the sit-ins.

1972 – In commemoration of the siging of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women suffrage, President Richard M. Nixon proclaimed this day Women’s Rights Day. The 19th Amendment was formally ratified by a sufficient number of states to add it to the Constitution on August 18th 1920, although Florida did NOT ratify this amendment until May 13, 1969.