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May 3: Today in History – Historical Events
Early Centuries – May 3 Historic Events – Before the 1700s
1. 3rd May 1455: Jews fled from Spain.
2. 3rd May 1568: Hundreds of Spanish people were slaughtered by French forces in Florida.
3. 3rd May 1624: The Spanish Silver fleet today set sail to Panama.
4. 3rd May 1654: A bridge in Rowley in Massachusetts was permitted to charge a toll for animals while people were allowed to cross the bridge toll-free.
18th Century – What Happened on May 3 – The 1700s
5. 3rd May 1715: Edmond Halley observed a total eclipse phenomenon“ Baily’s Beads”.
6. 3rd May 1791: Poland today adopted a new constitution.
19th Century – May 3 This Day That Year – The 1800s
7. 3rd May 1802: Washington DC was incorporated as a city today. The President appointed a Mayor and the Councilors were elected by property owners.
8. 3rd May 1808: Spanish executions took place today. It was later commemorated in Goya’s painting “Executions of 3rd May”.
9. 3rd May 1821: The Richmond (Virginia) light artillery was organized today.
10. 3rd May 1830: The first regular steam train (with a steam engine) train passenger service was started today.
11. 3rd May 1855: Macon B Allan became the first African American to be admitted to the Bar in Massachusetts.
12. 3rd May 1859: France declared war on Austria today.
13. 3rd May 1861: Lincoln today asked for 42,000 Army Volunteers and 18,000 seamen.
14. 3rd May 1863: As part of the Chancellorsville campaign the Battle of Salem Church took place in Spotsylvania County, Virginia.
15. 3rd May 1865: President Lincoln’s funeral train arrived in Springfield, Illinois today.
20th Century – Important Events On This Day May 3rd – The 1900s
16. 3rd May 1916: The British today executed Padraic Pearse an Irish national and a couple of others for their role in Easter Rising.
17. 3rd May 1921: West Virginia imposes the first sales tax today.
18. 3rd May 1923: Army lieutenants Kelly and Macready flew nonstop from New York to San Diego today which was the first nonstop flight across the US.
19. 3rd May 1926: US Marines today landed in Nicaragua. They remained there till 1933.
20. 3rd May 1926: Sinclair Lewis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize today for his work “Arrow Smith”.
21. 3rd May 1926: General strike in Britain with 3 million workers supporting the striking miners.
22. 3rd May 1929: Prussia banned anti-fascists.
23. 3rd May 1933: Nellie T Ross became today became the first female director of the US Mint.
24. 3rd May 1937: Margret Mitchell was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel “Gone With the Wind”.
25. 3rd May 1938: The concentration camp at Flossenburg was opened today.
26. 3rd May 1938: The Vatican today recognized Franco’s Catholic and fascist Spain.
27. 3rd May 1939: The Peoples Commissioner of Foreign Affairs Maxim Livinto was replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin today.
28. 3rd May 1941: Germany launched an air raid on Liverpool today.
29. 3rd May 1942: Nazis today executed 72 in a reprisal in Sachsenhuausen in the Netherlands. Lt Col, Leader Order Service, John H Westerveld was among the executed.
30. 3rd May 1944: Wartime rationing of most grades of meat ended in the United States.
31. 3rd May 1945: German physicist Werner Heisenberg was today arrested by the Allied forces.
32. 3rd May 1945: In Burma, Allied forces captured Rangoon from the Japanese.
33. 3rd May 1945: Following depth charges from Japanese mine-layer Hatsutaka, US submarine Lagarto sank in the Gulf of Thailand. 85 sailors died.
34. 3rd May 1945: Japanese forces in Okinawa launched a counter-offensive but failed to break the American lines.
35. 3rd May 1946: 28 defendants were tried for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal convened in Tokyo Japan. The Indian judge Radhabinod Pal who was the only judge with an International Law background was the only judge to find all the 28 innocent.
36. 3rd May 1947: The post-war constitution of Japan, drafted by Americans took effect today. It included the creation of the House of Councilors. It also denounced was as a way of settling disputes. It also established women’s rights and equality of sexes.
37. 3rd May 1948: Playwright Tennessee Williams was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his play “A Streetcar Named Desire”.
38. 3rd May 1948: The US Supreme Court today ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities were legally unenforceable. The Supreme Court had allowed the practice in 1926.
39. 3rd May 1951: The Festival of Britain, a national exhibition was officially opened today.
40. 3rd May 1952: A Ski modified US Air Force C-47 aircraft piloted by Lt Col William P Benedict and Lt Col Joseph D Fletcher was the first airplane to land at the geographic North Pole.
41. 3rd May 1957: A power outage was caused in San Francisco and the Peninsula when a low-flying Navy bomber practicing maneuvers sheared high voltage lines in the East Bay of San Francisco.
42. 3rd May 1960: Today Austria became a founding member of the European Free Trade Association along with Britain, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland. The agreement took effect in 1994.
43. 3rd May 1963: In Birmingham, Alabama Police Commissioner Bull Connor unleashed dogs and high-power fire hoses on school children who were staging a boycott.
44. 3rd May 1968: After a three-day battle US Marines recaptured Dai Do complex in Vietnam, only to find that North Vietnam had already evacuated the area.
45. 3rd May 1971: The “All Things Considered” program of the National Public Radio today premiered on 112 NPR stations. NPR was founded in 1970 but hit the airways in April 1971.
46. 3rd May 1971: The Pulitzer Prize was awarded to John Toland for his work “Rising Sun” which is based on the history of Japan covering Manchurian involvement, World War I, and World War II.
47. 3rd May 1971: The assassin of Martin Luther King, James Earl Ray was today caught in a jailbreak attempt in Tennessee.
48. 3rd May 1971: Demonstrations were held in Washington DC by anti-war protestors who called themselves mayday tribe, aiming at shutting down the capital. 13,000 anti-war protesters were arrested in three days.
49. 3rd May 1973: Sears Towers in Chicago, the world’s tallest building standing 443 meters topped out. Sears soon moved its headquarters to Sears Towers. When the London-based insurance broker Willis Group Holding consolidated its area offices in the building the name was changed to Willis Towers.
50. 3rd May 1978: “Sun Day” fell on a Thursday when events across the country were held by thousands of people extolling the virtues of Solar energy.
51. 3rd May 1986: An Airlanka plane in Colombo airport was bombed by Sri Lanka Tamil Tigers killing 16 people.
52. 3rd May 1986: A post-challenger launch by NASA, an unmanned Delta rocket lost power soon after lift-off and had to be destroyed for safety reasons.
53. 3rd May 1987: A Miami Herald report of a scandal involving presidential candidate Garry Hart and a young lady Donna Rice, cost Hart his presidential bid.
54. 3rd May 1988: The US White House today acknowledged that First Lady Nancy Regan used astrological advice to schedule her husband’s activities.
55. 3rd May 1989: Yasser Arafat, the PLO leader, after a two-day visit to France said that the PLO charter calling for the destruction of Israel was superseded by the declaration urging peaceful coexistence of the Jewish state and the Palestinian state.
56. 3rd May 1990: The US federal administration today approved the use of the drug AZT for treating children infected with the AIDs virus.
57. 3rd May 1991: It was reported by the US government today that the civilian unemployment rate fell in April to 6.6%.
58. 3rd May 1992: In the wake of rioting that erupted following Rodney King-taped beating acquittals, Soldiers continued to patrol the streets of Los Angeles and guard fire gutted and ransacked stores.
59. 3rd May 1994: President Clinton presided over a televised forum at Atlanta while denying suggestions that he had vacillated on foreign policy and admitted that global problems were more difficult than he had imagined.
60. 3rd May 1996: Faith healer and psychic from India Charaswamy, aka Nemi Chand Jain, admired by Elizabeth Tailor, was today held by police in New Delhi on charges of swindling $100,000 from a businessman in London.
61. 3rd May 1996: A UN report today said that Israel fired knowingly on a South Lebanon UN compound on April 18 when they learned that pro-Iranian guerillas had taken refuge there.
62. 3rd May 1997: Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion today won the first game of his rematch against IBM’s Deep Blue computer. He however lost the six-game match.
63. 3rd May 1998: It was today reported that drugs “angiostatin” and “endostatin”, discovered by Harvard scientist Judah Folkman, eradicated cancer in mice. Human trials are likely to begin in a year.
64. 3rd May 1998: Columbia Space Shuttle, after a 16-day mission to study the effects of the neurological effects of space travel, landed in Cape Canaveral today.
65. 3rd May 1999: Bill Gates today pledged $25 million over five years to help develop a vaccine for AIDS.
66. 3rd May 1999: Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi today met President Bill Clinton at the White House. This was the first official US visit by a Japanese Prime Minister in 12 years.
67. 3rd May 1999: In Kosovo, NATO jets hit a bus killing about 20 people.
21st Century – May 3 This Day In History – The 2000s
68. 3rd May 2000: Seven UN Kenyan peacekeepers were today killed by Rebels of the United Front. The number was later reduced to 4 presumed dead.
69. 3rd May 2000: A 17-year-old teenager in Japan hijacked a bus and killed a woman before being overpowered after a 15-hour 190-mile chase on the Sanyo expressway.
70. 3rd May 2000: The Federal Drug Administration department in the US today approved the first device to aid women with sexual dysfunction.
71. 3rd May 2001: For the first time since the Human Rights Commission was formed in 1947, the United States today lost its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission.
72. 3rd May 2002: A MiG-21 aircraft of the Indian Air Force today crashed into a Bank in Rajasthan India killing at least eight people.
73. 3rd May 2003: Jose Santos aboard Funny Cide won the 129th Kentucky Derby in 2: 01.19.
74. 3rd May 2004: In Bangladesh a false fire alarm in a garment factory caused a stampede when 4000 workers started rushing out of the factory. At least five women were crushed to death and dozens were injured.
75. 3rd May 2005: The World Health Organization today said Indonesia has detected its first case of polio in a decade prompting the government to launch a massive vaccination campaign covering more than 5 million children.
76. 3rd May 2005: Roadside bomb attacks by insurgents in Bagdad killed two American soldiers today.
77. 3rd May 2005: Kuwait’s parliament today created a roadblock that effectively kept women out of this year’s seats in municipal councils.
78. 3rd May 2005: Iran today told the United Nations non-proliferation conference that it would press for its uranium enrichment technology.
79. 3rd May 2006: A judge was killed today by suspected Taliban gunmen in Western Afghanistan.
80. 3rd May 2006: Armavia Flight 967 crashed into the Black Sea today killing all the 113 people on board.
81. 3rd May 2006: Britain and France today introduced a UN Security Council resolution demanding that Iran abandon its uranium enrichment program, possibly setting the stage for sanctions if Tehran does not comply.
82. 3rd May 2006: The European Union suspended aid and trade talks with Serbia after Belgrade failed to deliver fugitive Gen. Ratco Mladic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal.
83. 3rd May 2007: In a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal, British girl Madeleine McCann disappeared from her bed.
84. 3rd May 2008: In Sri Lanka, fierce fighting broke out between government troops and Tamil separatists. 35 rebels and 8 soldiers were killed in the fighting.
85. 3rd May 2009: There was a gas explosion in an apartment block in Siberia today. It tore through the apartment block and the building was soon engulfed in fire killing eight people including two children.
86. 3rd May 2010: In Sri Lanka, a court of appeal suspended a court-martial probing an ex-army chief and defeated presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka who is charged with engaging in politics while in uniform.
87. 3rd May 2011: A UN report says that the population is growing and may hit 10.1 billion by 2100.
88. 3rd May 2011: A crowded bus in Nepal skidded off the mountain road killing at least 12 and injuring many others.
89. 3rd May 2011: The domestic intelligence agency in Russia today claimed that it had established the guilt of Alexander Poteyev, identified as a spymaster by Russian media who betrayed a ring of agents operating in the United States.
90. 3rd May 2011: A tornado in New Zealand ripped across part of Auckland. The tornado upturned cars and sent debris slicing through the air. At least one person had died.
91. 3rd May 2012: In Pakistan in the Bajaur district of lawless tribal badlands on the Afghan border a couple of bombs exploded killing at least five people.
92. 3rd May 2012: Tens of thousands of Yemenis took to the streets today demanding the dismissal of the country’s former regime from top military posts.
93. 3rd May 2012: Film “Deool” today won the Golden Lotus award at the 59th National Film Festival Awards.
94. 3rd May 2013: A Theropod dinosaur, Aorun zhaoi, dating from 161 million years ago was discovered in China today.
95. 3rd May 2013: In the 60th National Film Festival in India “Pan Singh Tomar” won the Golden Lotus award.
96. 3rd May 2013: In Zimbabwe a lawyer for a youth leader said that Solomon Mazore is in jail for referring to 89-year-old Robert Mugabe as a “limping donkey” in an election campaign rally.
97. 3rd May 2013: In Syria the death toll from sectarian killings in the coastal city of Banias which was earlier put as 62 was later raised to 145.
98. 3rd May 2013: In Islamabad, Pakistan prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfikar Ali, who was investigating the assassination of former PM Benazir Bhutto was killed by gunmen.
99. 3rd May 2013: Italian police today arrested 29 airport baggage handlers for stealing cameras, cell phones, and other valuables from passengers’ baggage. The theft was detected after installing hidden cameras in the cargo holds of the airplanes.
100. 3rd May 2016: Ted Cruz suspended his campaign to be the Republican Presidential Nominee.
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