In the Sunshine State on this day in 1565 From the Diary of Father Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, Chaplain to Pedro Menendez’s expedition to Florida...

“Monday, August 27, while we were sailing along and almost at the end of the Bahama Channel, Our Lord showed us a mystery of the sky. It was that at about the ninth hour of the night, a comet came out of the sky, borne almost directly above, but toward the direction of the rising sun and went away giving such a light from itself that it appeared to be like the sun and it went traveling to the West, where Florida is. It lasted about the length of time in which one could recite the Creed twice. We took it for a good sign, according to the custom of the sea.”

Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, Laudonniere and Fort Caroline.

In 1920 Fay Bridges of Sneads (Jackson County) cast her ballot in an election for mayor and constable. She thus became the first woman in Florida to vote in an election following the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

In 1957 Central Florida Community College was founded in Ocala on this date.

In 1970 Gwen Sawyer Cherry, the first African-American woman to serve in the Florida Legislature, was born in Miami in 1923. Ms. Cherry was elected to the Florida House of Representatives from Dade County in 1970. A lawyer, teacher and author, she graduated from Florida A &M University in 1965. Ms. Cherry was killed in a one-car accident in Tallahassee on February 7, 1979.