In the Sunshine State on this day in 1565 From the account of Pedro Menendez’s expedition to Florida in 1565 by Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, the chaplain to the expedition. In today’s account, Father Mendoza recounts the beginning of Menendez’s expedition against the French at Fort Caroline.

“Sunday, September 16, he [Menendez] departed with 500 men with many arquebuses and pikes, each one of the soldiers carrying a twelve pound sack of bread on his shoulders and a bottle of wine for the road. They took two Indian chiefs who were great enemies of the French, so that they might show the way. According to the practice of those Indians and by the signs they made, we understood that it was five leagues to the fort of the enemies, but one the road it appeared to be more than fifteen and a very bad road in the very hot sun. But all have traveled it, according to the letter we received from the General [Menendez] today, the 19th of said month.”

In 1853 House Speaker A. K. Allison proclaimed himself Acting Governor of Florida when the governor, Thomas Brown, and the Senate President, R. J. Floyd, were both out of the state. Allison served until October 3 when James E. Broome was regularly inaugurated as governor.

In 1928 The Belle Glade and Palm Beaches area was devastated by a hurricane. This was the culmination of the Great Lake Okeechobee Hurricane struck Florida as a Category 4 storm, with winds pushing lake waters to a storm surge of more than 15 feet. The area surrounding the lake’s south end, occupied primarily by migrant agricultural workers, flooded. The Red Cross’s death toll count reached 1,836, but additional bodies and skeletons were discovered after the end of the Red Cross count. In response to this disaster, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built dikes around the lake to prevent a recurrence. Florida author Zora Neale Hurston recorded the impact on this hurricane on migrants in her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

In 1968 The first classes convened at Warner Southern College in Lake Wales. The college was founded by the Southeastern Association of the Church of God.