At some point during news coverage of the shuttle mission, you may hear at least one well-meaning reporter sign-off with the phrase: "Reporting from Cape Kennedy."

That tagline would be both confusing and inaccurate.

The gaffe can be traced to a snap decision that President Lyndon Johnson made in 1963 when he renamed Cape Canaveral as "Cape Kennedy" in honor of his slain predecessor, President John Kennedy.

The change -- and the way in which it was done -- ignited statewide, bipartisan resentment that burned as hot as a rocket's flame for the next decade.

The name Cape Canaveral goes back more than 400 years, when Spanish explorer Juan Ponce De Leon stumbled onto the area in 1513 while searching for the legendary Fountain of Youth.

He called the wedge of beach "canaveral" for its abundance of canes and reeds. It wasn't long before mapmakers began to identify the area as Cabo de Canaveral.

The first to publicly link Florida with space travel was Jules Verne, who chose a site in Tampa as the location for a launch pad in his 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon.

In 1948, life caught up with literature when the Joint Long Range Proving Ground was established at the Cape's Banana River Naval Air Station to test military missiles. Two years later, the Army launched a modified V 2 missile from the Proving Ground, giving local residents their first look at a space shot.

NASA took up residence at the Cape in 1958, using the Proving Ground for the launch of its Mercury and Gemini programs, as well as the initial Apollo test flights. By then the area had been renamed the Atlantic Missile Range.

By the time Kennedy challenged the nation to go to the moon, NASA had outgrown the facilities at the Missile Range and bought 80,000 acres of adjacent land on Merritt Island, between the Indian and Banana rivers. It was christened the NASA Launch Operations Center.

From left to right, Robert C. Seamans Jr., Wernher von Braun and President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. This was Kennedy's last visit to Cape Canaveral before his assassination on November 22, 1963.

Kennedy visited the site on November 16, 1963, taking a helicopter ride to review the construction. He marveled at a model of the 281-foot (86-meter) Saturn 5 moon rocket, which towered over the 72-foot (30-meter) Atlas booster that had launched the Mercury astronauts.

"This is fantastic!" Kennedy exclaimed.

Six days later he was dead, struck down by an assassin's bullet in Dallas.

Newly-installed President Johnson made the name change less than a week later out of respect for the Kennedy family. He announced it in a national Thanksgiving Day broadcast on November 28, 1963.

"I have today determined that Station Number 1 of the Atlantic Missile Range and the NASA Launch Operations Center in Florida shall hereafter be known as the JFK Space Center," Johnson said. "I have also acted today...to change the name of Cape Canaveral. It shall be known hereafter as Cape Kennedy."

President Lyndon B. Johnson takes a phone call at the White House. He proposed renaming Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy in honor of his slain predecessor.

Johnson quickly learned how attached Florida residents were to the name Cape Canaveral.

The Orlando Sentinel wrote: "the [public] reaction was one of mixed emotions. The renaming of the base to read 'John F. Kennedy Space Center' was warmly welcomed. The elimination of 'Canaveral' was something else again. That is a piece of history, and people traditionally are reluctant to sacrifice anything so firmly anchored in antiquity."

Name-changing edicts normally fall within the purview of the Department of Interior's Board of Geographic Names, which meets to review new proposals. But Johnson had asked Interior Secretary Stewart Udall to expedite the process. A quick telephone survey of Board members achieved the unanimous vote in favor of the change that Johnson had requested.

Although Johnson had indicated that he was acting with "the understanding and support of my friend, the Governor of Florida, Farris Bryant," the majority of state residents were incensed.

"Cape Canaveral is as traditional to America as Times Square, the Grand Canyon, Squaw Valley or Disneyland," University of Tampa professor Richard Cooper wrote in Missiles and Rockets magazine.

"To destroy its name, now or ever, is approaching the similarity of tactics employed by the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984; eradicating names of persons, places and things without a trace," Cooper wrote.

The Florida Historical Society immediately opposed the change, though it did favor renaming the NASA base itself.

Cape Canaveral Mayor Richard Thurm called Johnson's action "a disruption of the history of the State of Florida."

City Council members passed a unanimous resolution questioning the legal authority of the president and the governor to change the name. The council also declared it had no intention of changing the name of their town.

When northern politicians jumped into the debate, Florida residents responded quickly: "You want to name a cape after Kennedy? How about Cape Cod?"

A map of Cape Canaveral and its vicinity, circa 1958. The area was once a scenic and unsettled place with beautiful beaches and thriving fishing areas.

Still, news reports throughout the Gemini program and the early years of Apollo routinely carried a "Cape Kennedy" dateline.

When President Johnson left office in 1969, his controversial edict was firmly imprinted throughout America's Space Coast.

But a month before the launch of Apollo 11, Florida lawmakers passed a resolution seeking the Canaveral restoration and urged the Florida delegation to take up the issue before Congress.

NASA stayed on the sidelines throughout the debate.

Florida's two U.S. senators -- Spessard Holland, a Democrat, and Edward Gurney, a Republican -- jointly introduced a resolution on July 10, 1969, in support of restoring the name Canaveral. They questioned how the Board of Geographic Names could have acted without hearings, in violation of federal law.

The resolution, however, went nowhere.

According to an article in Aviation Week and Space Technology, a "significant amount of deference was being given to the slain president's sole surviving brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy."

The younger Kennedy was fending off publicity regarding his accident at Chappaquiddick and the death of a young female passenger, and his fellow senators were reluctant to "add to his tribulations," the article said.

Two years later, in February 1972, Gurney revived the effort and introduced Senate Joint Resolution 193. Holland was no longer in office, so his replacement, Lawton Chiles, joined the fight, while Rep. Lou Frey, Jr. (R-Florida) carried the banner in the House.

The Senate took a vote on the resolution in August, where it was referred to a committee for action. Once again, the effort languished.

The Miami Herald reported that Congress had been close to acting on the resolution until the Kennedy family protested. Family matriarch Rose Kennedy had placed a call to House Majority Whip Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, Jr., (D-Massachusetts) requesting that her son's name remain linked with the Cape.

Things were faring no better on the Senate side. Sen. Ed Muskie (D-Maine) complained that the proposal could be interpreted as a "slap at the historical stature of JFK and an insult to the Kennedy family." Other friends of the Kennedy clan chimed in that the change could be "viewed at home and abroad as repudiation of JFK leadership."

Like the attempt two years earlier, Resolution 193 vanished.

But Congressman Frey threatened to carry his case to court. If that didn't work, he planned to ask Florida's governor to simply ignore the federal moniker and restore the name, Cape Canaveral.

In the end, that's just what he did.

On May 29, 1973, Gov. Reuben Askew signed a law ordering all state maps and documents to use the name Cape Canaveral instead of Cape Kennedy.

It took five months, but Washington finally got the message. In October, the Board of Geographic Names voted to concur with the Florida law.

Sen. Kennedy then sent a letter to the Miami Herald, saying that his family understood the board's decision. Though the Cape would no longer honor JFK, the Kennedy family was "pleased that the site -- where our nation successfully launched men to the moon, and continues to send men and vehicles into the reaches of outer space -- will still bear his name."

Today, the Delta, Atlas and Titan family of rockets roar off the pads of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station while space shuttle missions blast off across the river at the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island.

It all takes place on a cape where the name "Canaveral" has survived, though the "abundance of canes and reeds" that it signifies hasn't.