Today is the 40th anniversary of the worst Coast Guard disaster ever in peacetime. It happened at the mouth of Tampa Bay near the old Sunshine Skyway. 23 Coast Guardsmen died when a tanker crashed into the buoy tender "Blackthorn" on January 28, 1980. There is a Blackthorn memorial, on the north rest area of the Sunshine Skyway.
This was before the tanker struck the troubled bridge sending cars and a Greyhound Bus into the water below the bridge. That event also goes back 40 years on May 9th, 1980.
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