4 December 1913

On Dec. 4th, 1913 Percival Elliot Fansler made his pitch for the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line in St. Pete. "They thought I had a mighty clever idea," he wrote later, "but they didn't believe there was any such thing as a flying boat. I talked a group of a dozen men into putting up a guarantee of $100 each, and the Board of Trade came in with a like amount." Fansler gained support from the city and other St. Pete businessmen, subscribing a $2,400 airline subsidy, even though there never had been a scheduled airline in the history of man. The first scheduled heavier-than-air airline flight would occur less than a month later.