Cape Canaveral, Florida, was named by the Spanish and began to appear on maps around 1564.
After the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) and because he had been such a driving force behind the space program, Jacqueline Kennedy (1929-1994), his widow, asked President Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973) to rename the space facility located there after her late husband.
Instead Johnson renamed not just the facility but the entire cape.
The move was so strongly opposed by local residents that in 1973 the name Cape Canaveral was restored.
The space facility is still named the Kennedy Space Center.
Canaveral means “canebrake” or “canefield” in Spanish, and Cape Canaveral is usually interpreted as “Cape of Canes.”
