In the Sunshine State on this day in:

1722 The Spanish re-established control over Pensacola following the loss of the territory by France as a result of the outcome of the War of the Quadruple Alliance in Europe.  Spanish Lieutenant Colonel  Alejandro Wauchope received possession of Pensacola from French Lieutenant Jean Baptiste Reboue.

1902 Major George R. Fairbanks was elected president at the organizational meeting of the Florida Historical Society in Jacksonville.  Although originally founded in 1856 in St. Augustine, the War Between the States and Reconstruction forced the Society into a hiatus.  Fairbanks and others realized the need for the creation of the Society to “collect, preserve and publicize documents relating to Florida history.”  Florida did not have a state archive until the 1960s and until that time the Society performed the job of collecting documents.  Fairbanks enunciated the need for a Society library, a task that was finally achieved in 1997 when the Alma Clyde Field Library of Florida History opened in Historic Cocoa Village.

1925 WJAX, the radio station owned by the City of Jacksonville, went on the air with its first broadcast.

Yesterday ...

1885 Scottish settlers left Glasgow bound for Sarasota.

1925 Radio station WFLA (Tampa Bay) was founded today in the Fenway Hotel in Dunedin.  WFLA was the first licensed commercial radio station in Florida and included historian Hampton Dunn as one of its “on air” newsmen and personalities.

1926 The fabulous “Million Dollar Pier” was dedicated at St. Petersburg.

1941 The first meeting of the Florida Farm Bureau Federation was held today in Winter Haven.