[FHStoday] TODAY IN FLORIDA HISTORY

[Nick Wynne]

TODAY IN FLORIDA HISTORY
DECEMBER 14
1860            Robert C. Williams assumed office today as the Comptroller 
of Florida.  He held this office until May 26, 1863, when he was replaced 
by Walter Gwynn.

1861            More than 1,000 Federal troops arrived to reinforce the 
Union garrison holding Fort Pickens and Santa Rosa Island in Pensacola Bay.

1916            Today is the birthday of Hampton Dunn, historian, newsman, 
and raconteur.  Dunn, the former editor of The Tampa Times was born in 
Floral City, Florida.  He was educated at Mercer University and the 
University of Tampa.  A well-known newsman, Dunn won the coveted Spot News 
Prize awarded by the American press Association for his coverage of the 
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings trial (see below).

1953            Pulitzer Prize Winner Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (born August 
8, 1896) died today.  Ms. Rawlings, who resided in the small village of 
Cross Creek, was famous for her novels, South Moon Under, The Yearling, and 
Cross Creek, and a myriad of short stories and other works.  Salty, 
acerbic, gracious and stylish, "Miz" Rawlings took the backwoods people of 
Central Florida to heart and used them to illustrate the very best and 
worst of people.  In 1945, Rawlings was sued for "invasion of privacy" when 
she wrote an accurate, though mean, description of one of her 
neighbors.  In a famous trial which featured the legal maneuvering of 
attorney Sisbee Scruggs, she was found guilty, but fined only a penny.

1962            The Mariner 2 spacecraft gave mankind its first close-up 
observations of another planet today as it flew by Venus and beamed 
close-up pictures of that planet's surface over 36 million miles of space 
to Earth.  Mariner 2, launched from Cape Canaveral 109 days ago, flew to 
within 21,000 miles of the surface of Venus for more than 40 minutes.

1970            The trial of Miami native Lieutenant William G. Calley on 
charges of murdering civilian inhabitants of the village of Mylai in Songmy 
Province in Viet Nam continued today.  Today, Sergeant L. G. Bacon 
testified that Captain Ernest Medina, Calley's commanding officer, gave the 
order to exterminate everyone in the village, including women and 
children.  The trial was held at at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia.