Before there was Sea World or the Long Beach Aquarium or any of the so-called marine mammal parks now commonplace all over the world, there was Florida’s “Marineland,” built before the second world war. Originally conceived as a kind of underwater movie studio, helping Hollywood get better underwater footage, it was sponsored by Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, the descendant of the steel magnate, and Ilya Tolstoy the son of the great Russian author Leo Tolstoy, among others.

On this day, June 23, in 1938 Marine Studios opened to the public, welcoming over 30,000 guests that showed up on the very first day. There would not be anymore large-scale public exhibitions until Marine Studios reopened as a theme park.

While the park started out as a model for the other aquariums, oceanariums and marine parks, it gradually moved away from animal performers like the “educated porpoises” and more into research and conservation awareness programs. Marineland was the first to successfully breed and train Atlantic bottlenose dolphins, and attracted marine scientists to study dolphin social behavior and communication.