Today In History...

"He who forgets history is doomed to repeat it"

George Santayana

1887: Lake County, Florida’s 47th county was established from territory taken from Orange and Sumter counties. The county took its name from the more than 500 lakes, contained in the county.

1891: Florida’s first Salvation Army Corps was established today in Jacksonville. Five years later on this date, a Salvation Army officer was arrested while conducting street services and charged with disturbing the peace.

1895 British inventor Birt Acres patents film camera/projector.

1919 Charles Strite patents pop-up toaster.

1921 After 84 years of British control, Afghanistan achieves sovereignty.

1930 Richard Drew invents masking tape.

1935 Supreme Court declares FDR's National Recovery Act unconstitutional.

1937 Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, dedicated.

1942 Top German Nazi Reinhard Heydrich is shot and mortally wounded in Prague, Hitler orders 10,000 Czechoslovakians murdered.

1951 Chinese Communists force Dalai Lama to surrender his army to Beijing.

1958: Pratt and Whitney established its Florida research and Development Center in West Palm Beach.

1969 Walt Disney World construction begins. Florida as we knew it is gone.

1985 Britain agrees to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.

1988 Afternoon thunderstorms in southern Florida caused the mercury at Miami to dip to a record low reading of 69 degrees.

1989 Unseasonably hot weather prevailed in the southeast. Lakeland, FL, reported a record high of 99 degrees