May 3 in history
03/05/20191469 Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and political author was born (d. 1527).
1491 Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga was baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I.
1494 Christopher Columbus first sighted what is now known as Jamaica.
1715 Edmund Halley’s total solar eclipse .
1768 Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and industrialist, was born (d. 1838).
1791 The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitution in Europe) was proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1802 Washington, D.C. was incorporated as a city.
1808 Finnish War: Sweden lost the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia.
1808 Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels were fired upon near Príncipe Pío hill.
1815 Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples was defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war.
1820 Missionary John Butler turned the first furrow at Kerikeri, becoming the first to use a European plough in New Zealand.
1830 The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway was opened – the first steam hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.
1837 The University of Athens was founded.
1844 Richard D’Oyly Carte, English theatrical impresario was born (d. 1901).
1849 The May Uprising in Dresden began – the last of the German revolutions of 1848.
1860 Charles XV of Sweden-Norway was crowned king of Sweden.
1867 The Hudson’s Bay Company gave up all claims to Vancouver Island.
1877 Labatt Park, the oldest continually operating baseball grounds in the world had its first game.
1887 Margaret Cruickshank became the first woman to be registered as a doctor in New Zealand.
1896 – Dodie Smith, English author and playwright was born (d. 1990).
1898 Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, was born (d. 1978).
1901 The Great Fire of 1901 began in Jacksonville, Florida.
1903 Bing Crosby, American singer and actor, was born (d. 1977).
1913 Raja Harishchandra the first full-length Indian feature film was released.
1915 The poem In Flanders Fields was written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.
1919 Pete Seeger, American singer, was born (d.2014).
1920 A Bolshevik coup failed in the Democratic Republic of Georgia.
1921 Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer was born (d. 1989).
1921 Joe Ames, American singer, was born (d. 2007).
1926 Ann B. Davis, American actress Alice on The Brady Bunch, was born.
1928 Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China.
1929 – Charles Ewing Mackay, the disgraced former mayor of Whanganui, was shot dead by Berlin police during May Day riots in the German capital.
1933 Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman to head the United States Mint.
1933 James Brown, American singer and dancer, was born (d. 2006).
1934 Frankie Valli, American singer (The Four Seasons), was born.
1937 Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
1942 World War II: Japanese naval troops invaded Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo .
1945 World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.
1946 International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
1947 New post-war Japanese constitution went into effect.
1948 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities were legally unenforceable.
1951 London’s Royal Festival Hall opened with the Festival of Britain.
1951 The United States Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees begin their closed door hearings into the dismissal of GeneralDouglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman.
1951 – The Kentucky Derby was televised for the first time.
1951 Christopher Cross, American musician, was born.
1952 Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict landed a plane at the North Pole.
1960 The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, opened in Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.
1960 – The Anne Frank House opened in Amsterdam.
1963 The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responded with violent force to stop the “Birmingham campaign” protesters.
1973 The Sears Tower in Chicago was topped out as the world’s tallest building.
1978 The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (later known as “spam“) was sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
1986 Twenty-one people were killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb exploded in an airliner (Flight UL512) at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka.
1991 The Declaration of Windhoek was signed.
1999 Oklahoma City was slammed by an F5 tornado killing forty-two people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. One of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak, this was the strongest tornado ever recorded with wind speeds of up to 318 mph.
2000 The sport of geocaching began, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.
2002 A military MiG-21 aircraft crashed into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight.
2003 – New Hampshire’s famous Old Man of the Mountain collapsed.
2006 Armavia Flight 967 crashed into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors.
2015 – Two gunmen launched an attempted attack on an anti-Islam event in Garland, Texas, which was held in response to the Charlie Hebdo shooting.
2016 – Eighty-eight thousand people were evacuated from their homes in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada as a wildfire ripped through the community, destroying approximately 2,400 homes and buildings.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
May 3 in history
03/05/20181469 Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and political author was born (d. 1527).
1491 Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga was baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I.
1494 Christopher Columbus first sighted what is now known as Jamaica.
1715 Edmund Halley’s total solar eclipse.
1768 Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and industrialist, was born (d. 1838).
1791 The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitution in Europe) was proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1802 Washington, D.C. was incorporated as a city.
1808 Finnish War: Sweden lost the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia.
1808 Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels were fired upon near Príncipe Pío hill.
1815 Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples was defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war.
1820 Missionary John Butler turned the first furrow at Kerikeri, becoming the first to use a European plough in New Zealand.
1830 The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway was opened – the first steam hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.
1837 The University of Athens was founded.
1844 Richard D’Oyly Carte, English theatrical impresario was born (d. 1901).
1849 The May Uprising in Dresden began – the last of the German revolutions of 1848.
1860 Charles XV of Sweden-Norway was crowned king of Sweden.
1867 The Hudson’s Bay Company gave up all claims to Vancouver Island.
1877 Labatt Park, the oldest continually operating baseball grounds in the world had its first game.
1887 Margaret Cruickshank became the first woman to be registered as a doctor in New Zealand.
1898 Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, was born (d. 1978).
1901 The Great Fire of 1901 began in Jacksonville, Florida.
1903 Bing Crosby, American singer and actor, was born (d. 1977).
1913 Raja Harishchandra the first full-length Indian feature film was released.
1915 The poem In Flanders Fields was written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.
1919 Pete Seeger, American singer, was born (d.2014).
1920 A Bolshevik coup failsedin the Democratic Republic of Georgia.
1921 Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer was born (d. 1989).
1921 Joe Ames, American singer, was born (d. 2007).
1926 Ann B. Davis, American actress Alice on The Brady Bunch, was born.
1928 Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China.
1929 – Charles Ewing Mackay, the disgraced former mayor of Whanganui, was shot dead by Berlin police during May Day riots in the German capital.
1933 Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman to head the United States Mint.
1933 James Brown, American singer and dancer, was born (d. 2006).
1934 Frankie Valli, American singer (The Four Seasons), was born.
1937 Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
1942 World War II: Japanese naval troops invaded Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo .
1945 World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, ThielbekandDeutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.
1946 International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
1947 New post-war Japanese constitution went into effect.
1948 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities were legally unenforceable.
1951 London’s Royal Festival Hall opened with the Festival of Britain.
1951 The United States Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees begin their closed door hearings into the dismissal of GeneralDouglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman.
1951 – The Kentucky Derby was televised for the first time.
1951 Christopher Cross, American musician, was born.
1952 Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedictlanded a plane at the North Pole.
1960 The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, opened in Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.
1960 – The Anne Frank House opened in Amsterdam.
1963 The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responded with violent force to stop the “Birmingham campaign” protesters.
1973 The Sears Tower in Chicago was topped out as the world’s tallest building.
1978 The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (later known as “spam“) was sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
1986 Twenty-one people were killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb exploded in an airliner (Flight UL512) at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka.
1991 The Declaration of Windhoek was signed.
1999 Oklahoma City was slammed by an F5 tornado killing forty-two people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. One of 66 from the1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak, this was the strongest tornado ever recorded with wind speeds of up to 318 mph.
2000 The sport of geocaching began, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.
2002 A military MiG-21 aircraft crashed into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight.
2003 – New Hampshire’s famous Old Man of the Mountain collapsed.
2006 Armavia Flight 967 crashed into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors.
2015 – Two gunmen launched an attempted attack on an anti-Islam event in Garland, Texas, which was held in response to the Charlie Hebdoshooting..
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
May 3 in history
03/05/20171469 Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and political author was born (d. 1527).
1491 Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga was baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I.
1494 Christopher Columbus first sighted what is now known as Jamaica.
1715 Edmund Halley’s total solar eclipse.
1768 Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and industrialist, was born (d. 1838).
1791 The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitutionin Europe) was proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1802 Washington, D.C. was incorporated as a city.
1808 Finnish War: Sweden lost the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia.
1808 Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels were fired upon near Príncipe Pío hill.
1815 Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples was defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war.
1820 Missionary John Butler turned the first furrow at Kerikeri, becoming the first to use a European plough in New Zealand.
1830 The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway was opened – the first steam hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.
1837 The University of Athens was founded.
1844 Richard D’Oyly Carte, English theatrical impresario was born (d. 1901).
1849 The May Uprising in Dresden began – the last of the German revolutions of 1848.
1860 Charles XV of Sweden-Norway was crowned king of Sweden.
1867 The Hudson’s Bay Company gave up all claims to Vancouver Island.
1877 Labatt Park, the oldest continually operating baseball grounds in the world had its first game.
1887 Margaret Cruickshank became the first woman to be registered as a doctor in New Zealand.
1898 Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, was born (d. 1978).
1901 The Great Fire of 1901 began in Jacksonville, Florida.
1903 Bing Crosby, American singer and actor, was born (d. 1977).
1913 Raja Harishchandra the first full-length Indian feature film was released.
1915 The poem In Flanders Fields was written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.
1919 Pete Seeger, American singer, was born (d.2014).
1920 A Bolshevik coup failsedin the Democratic Republic of Georgia.
1921 Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer was born (d. 1989).
1921 Joe Ames, American singer, was born (d. 2007).
1926 Ann B. Davis, American actress Alice on The Brady Bunch, was born.
1928 Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China.
1929 – Charles Ewing Mackay, the disgraced former mayor of Whanganui, was shot dead by Berlin police during May Day riots in the German capital.
1933 Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman to head the United States Mint.
1933 James Brown, American singer and dancer, was born (d. 2006).
1934 Frankie Valli, American singer (The Four Seasons), was born.
1937 Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
1942 World War II: Japanese naval troops invaded Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo .
1945 World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek andDeutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.
1946 International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
1947 New post-war Japanese constitution went into effect.
1948 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities were legally unenforceable.
1951 London’s Royal Festival Hall opened with the Festival of Britain.
1951 The United States Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees begin their closed door hearings into the dismissal of GeneralDouglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman.
1951 – The Kentucky Derby was televised for the first time.
1951 Christopher Cross, American musician, was born.
1952 Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedictlanded a plane at the North Pole.
1960 The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, opened in Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.
1960 – The Anne Frank House opened in Amsterdam.
1963 The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responded with violent force to stop the “Birmingham campaign” protesters.
1973 The Sears Tower in Chicago was topped out as the world’s tallest building.
1978 The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (later known as “spam“) was sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
1986 Twenty-one people were killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb exploded in an airliner (Flight UL512) at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka.
1991 The Declaration of Windhoek was signed.
1999 Oklahoma City was slammed by an F5 tornado killing forty-two people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. One of 66 from the1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak, this was the strongest tornado ever recorded with wind speeds of up to 318 mph.
2000 The sport of geocaching began, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.
2002 A military MiG-21 aircraft crashed into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight.
2003 – New Hampshire’s famous Old Man of the Mountain collapsed.
2006 Armavia Flight 967 crashed into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors.
2015 – Two gunmen launched an attempted attack on an anti-Islam event in Garland, Texas, which was held in response to the Charlie Hebdo shooting..
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
May 3 in history
03/05/20161469 Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and political author was born (d. 1527).
1491 Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga was baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I.
1494 Christopher Columbus first sighted what is now known as Jamaica.
1715 Edmund Halley’s total solar eclipse.
1768 Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and industrialist, was born (d. 1838).
1791 The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitutionin Europe) was proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1802 Washington, D.C. was incorporated as a city.
1808 Finnish War: Sweden lost the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia.
1808 Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels were fired upon near Príncipe Pío hill.
1815 Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples was defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war.
1820 Missionary John Butler turned the first furrow at Kerikeri, becoming the first to use a European plough in New Zealand.
1830 The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway was opened – the first steam hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.
1837 The University of Athens was founded.
1844 Richard D’Oyly Carte, English theatrical impresario was born (d. 1901).
1849 The May Uprising in Dresden began – the last of the German revolutions of 1848.
1860 Charles XV of Sweden-Norway was crowned king of Sweden.
1867 The Hudson’s Bay Company gave up all claims to Vancouver Island.
1877 Labatt Park, the oldest continually operating baseball grounds in the world had its first game.
1887 Margaret Cruickshank became the first woman to be registered as a doctor in New Zealand.
1898 Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, was born (d. 1978).
1901 The Great Fire of 1901 began in Jacksonville, Florida.
1903 Bing Crosby, American singer and actor, was born (d. 1977).
1913 Raja Harishchandra the first full-length Indian feature film was released.
1915 The poem In Flanders Fields was written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.
1919 Pete Seeger, American singer, was born (d.2014).
1920 A Bolshevik coup failsedin the Democratic Republic of Georgia.
1921 Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer was born (d. 1989).
1921 Joe Ames, American singer, was born (d. 2007).
1928 Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China.
1929 – Charles Ewing Mackay, the disgraced former mayor of Whanganui, was shot dead by Berlin police during May Day riots in the German capital.

1933 Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman to head the United States Mint.
1933 James Brown, American singer and dancer, was born (d. 2006).
1934 Frankie Valli, American singer (The Four Seasons), was born.
1937 Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
1942 World War II: Japanese naval troops invaded Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo .
1945 World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek andDeutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.
1946 International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
1947 New post-war Japanese constitution went into effect.
1948 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities were legally unenforceable.
1951 London’s Royal Festival Hall opened with the Festival of Britain.
1951 The United States Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees begin their closed door hearings into the dismissal of GeneralDouglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman.
1951 – The Kentucky Derby was televised for the first time.
1951 Christopher Cross, American musician, was born.
1952 Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedictlanded a plane at the North Pole.
1960 The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, opened in Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.
1960 – The Anne Frank House opened in Amsterdam.
1963 The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responded with violent force to stop the “Birmingham campaign” protesters.
1973 The Sears Tower in Chicago was topped out as the world’s tallest building.
1978 The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (later known as “spam“) was sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
1986 Twenty-one people were killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb exploded in an airliner (Flight UL512) at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka.
1991 The Declaration of Windhoek was signed.
1999 Oklahoma City was slammed by an F5 tornado killing forty-two people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. One of 66 from the1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak, this was the strongest tornado ever recorded with wind speeds of up to 318 mph.
2000 The sport of geocaching began, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.
2002 A military MiG-21 aircraft crashed into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight.
2003 – New Hampshire’s famous Old Man of the Mountain collapsed.
2006 Armavia Flight 967 crashed into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors.
2015 – Two gunmen launched an attempted attack on an anti-Islam event in Garland, Texas, which was held in response to the Charlie Hebdo shooting..
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
May 3 in history
03/05/20151469 Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and political author was born (d. 1527).
1491 Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga was baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I.
1494 Christopher Columbus first sighted what is now known as Jamaica.
1715 Edmund Halley’s total solar eclipse.
1768 Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and industrialist, was born (d. 1838).
1791 The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitutionin Europe) was proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1802 Washington, D.C. was incorporated as a city.
1808 Finnish War: Sweden lost the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia.
1808 Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels were fired upon near Príncipe Pío hill.
1815 Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples was defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war.
1820 Missionary John Butler turned the first furrow at Kerikeri, becoming the first to use a European plough in New Zealand.
1830 The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway was opened – the first steam hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.
1837 The University of Athens was founded.
1844 Richard D’Oyly Carte, English theatrical impresario was born (d. 1901).
1849 The May Uprising in Dresden began – the last of the German revolutions of 1848.
1860 Charles XV of Sweden-Norway was crowned king of Sweden.
1867 The Hudson’s Bay Company gave up all claims to Vancouver Island.
1877 Labatt Park, the oldest continually operating baseball grounds in the world had its first game.
1887 Margaret Cruickshank became the first woman to be registered as a doctor in New Zealand.
1898 Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, was born (d. 1978).
1901 The Great Fire of 1901 began in Jacksonville, Florida.
1903 Bing Crosby, American singer and actor, was born (d. 1977).
1913 Raja Harishchandra the first full-length Indian feature film was released.
1915 The poem In Flanders Fields was written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.
1919 Pete Seeger, American singer, was born (d.2014).
1920 A Bolshevik coup failsedin the Democratic Republic of Georgia.
1921 Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer was born (d. 1989).
1921 Joe Ames, American singer, was born (d. 2007).
1928 Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China.
1929 – Charles Ewing Mackay, the disgraced former mayor of Whanganui, was shot dead by Berlin police during May Day riots in the German capital.

1933 Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman to head the United States Mint.
1933 James Brown, American singer and dancer, was born (d. 2006).
1934 Frankie Valli, American singer (The Four Seasons), was born.
1937 Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
1942 World War II: Japanese naval troops invaded Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo .
1945 World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.
1946 International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
1947 New post-war Japanese constitution went into effect.
1948 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities were legally unenforceable.
1951 London’s Royal Festival Hall opened with the Festival of Britain.
1951 The United States Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees begin their closed door hearings into the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman.
1951 – The Kentucky Derby was televised for the first time.
1951 Christopher Cross, American musician, was born.
1952 Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict landed a plane at the North Pole.
1960 The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, opened in Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.
1960 – The Anne Frank House opened in Amsterdam.
1963 The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responded with violent force to stop the “Birmingham campaign” protesters.
1973 The Sears Tower in Chicago was topped out as the world’s tallest building.
1978 The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (later known as “spam“) was sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
1986 Twenty-one people were killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb exploded in an airliner (Flight UL512) at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka.
1991 The Declaration of Windhoek was signed.
1999 Oklahoma City was slammed by an F5 tornado killing forty-two people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. One of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak, this was the strongest tornado ever recorded with wind speeds of up to 318 mph.
2000 The sport of geocaching began, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.
2002 A military MiG-21 aircraft crashed into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight.
2003 – New Hampshire’s famous Old Man of the Mountain collapsed.
2006 Armavia Flight 967 crashed into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
May 3 in history
03/05/20141469 Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and political author was born (d. 1527).
1491 Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga was baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I.
1494 Christopher Columbus first sighted what is now known as Jamaica.
1715 Edmund Halley’s total solar eclipse.
1768 Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and industrialist, was born (d. 1838).
1791 The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitutionin Europe) was proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1802 Washington, D.C. was incorporated as a city.
1808 Finnish War: Sweden lost the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia.
1808 Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels were fired upon near Príncipe Pío hill.
1815 Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples was defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war.
1820 Missionary John Butler turned the first furrow at Kerikeri, becoming the first to use a European plough in New Zealand.
1830 The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway was opened – the first steam hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.
1837 The University of Athens was founded.
1844 Richard D’Oyly Carte, English theatrical impresario was born (d. 1901).
1849 The May Uprising in Dresden began – the last of the German revolutions of 1848.
1860 Charles XV of Sweden-Norway was crowned king of Sweden.
1867 The Hudson’s Bay Company gave up all claims to Vancouver Island.
1877 Labatt Park, the oldest continually operating baseball grounds in the world had its first game.
1887 Margaret Cruickshank became the first woman to be registered as a doctor in New Zealand.
1898 Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, was born (d. 1978).
1901 The Great Fire of 1901 began in Jacksonville, Florida.
1903 Bing Crosby, American singer and actor, was born (d. 1977).
1913 Raja Harishchandra the first full-length Indian feature film was released.
1915 The poem In Flanders Fields was written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.
1919 Pete Seeger, American singer, was born (d.2014).
1920 A Bolshevik coup failsedin the Democratic Republic of Georgia.
1921 Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer was born (d. 1989).
1921 Joe Ames, American singer, was born (d. 2007).
1928 Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China.
1929 – Charles Ewing Mackay, the disgraced former mayor of Whanganui, was shot dead by Berlin police during May Day riots in the German capital.

1933 Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman to head the United States Mint.
1933 James Brown, American singer and dancer, was born (d. 2006).
1934 Frankie Valli, American singer (The Four Seasons), was born.
1937 Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
1942 World War II: Japanese naval troops invaded Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo .
1945 World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.
1946 International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
1947 New post-war Japanese constitution went into effect.
1948 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities were legally unenforceable.
1951 London’s Royal Festival Hall opened with the Festival of Britain.
1951 The United States Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees begin their closed door hearings into the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman.
1951 – The Kentucky Derby was televised for the first time.
1951 Christopher Cross, American musician, was born.
1952 Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict landed a plane at the North Pole.
1960 The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, opened in Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.
1960 – The Anne Frank House opened in Amsterdam.
1963 The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responded with violent force to stop the “Birmingham campaign” protesters.
1973 The Sears Tower in Chicago was topped out as the world’s tallest building.
1978 The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (later known as “spam“) was sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
1986 Twenty-one people were killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb exploded in an airliner (Flight UL512) at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka.
1991 The Declaration of Windhoek was signed.
1999 Oklahoma City was slammed by an F5 tornado killing forty-two people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. One of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak, this was the strongest tornado ever recorded with wind speeds of up to 318 mph.
2000 The sport of geocaching began, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.
2002 A military MiG-21 aircraft crashed into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight.
2003 – New Hampshire’s famous Old Man of the Mountain collapsed.
2006 Armavia Flight 967 crashed into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
May 3 in history
03/05/20131469 Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and political author was born (d. 1527).
1491 Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga was baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I.
1494 Christopher Columbus first sighted what is now known as Jamaica.
1715 Edmund Halley’s total solar eclipse.
1768 Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and industrialist, was born (d. 1838).
1791 The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitutionin Europe) was proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1802 Washington, D.C. was incorporated as a city.
1808 Finnish War: Sweden lost the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia.
1808 Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels were fired upon near Príncipe Pío hill.
1815 Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples was defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war.
1820 Missionary John Butler turned the first furrow at Kerikeri, becoming the first to use a European plough in New Zealand.
1830 The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway was opened – the first steam hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.
1837 The University of Athens was founded.
1844 Richard D’Oyly Carte, English theatrical impresario was born (d. 1901).
1849 The May Uprising in Dresden began – the last of the German revolutions of 1848.
1860 Charles XV of Sweden-Norway was crowned king of Sweden.
1867 The Hudson’s Bay Company gave up all claims to Vancouver Island.
1877 Labatt Park, the oldest continually operating baseball grounds in the world had its first game.
1887 Margaret Cruickshank became the first woman to be registered as a doctor in New Zealand.
1898 Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, was born (d. 1978).
1901 The Great Fire of 1901 began in Jacksonville, Florida.
1903 Bing Crosby, American singer and actor, was born (d. 1977).
1913 Raja Harishchandra the first full-length Indian feature film was released.
1915 The poem In Flanders Fields was written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.
1919 Pete Seeger, American singer, was born.
1920 A Bolshevik coup failsedin the Democratic Republic of Georgia.
1921 Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer was born (d. 1989).
1921 Joe Ames, American singer, was born (d. 2007).
1928 Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China.
1929 – Charles Ewing Mackay, the disgraced former mayor of Whanganui, was shot dead by Berlin police during May Day riots in the German capital.

1933 Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman to head the United States Mint.
1933 James Brown, American singer and dancer, was born (d. 2006).
1934 Frankie Valli, American singer (The Four Seasons), was born.
1937 Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
1942 World War II: Japanese naval troops invaded Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo .
1945 World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.
1946 International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
1947 New post-war Japanese constitution went into effect.
1948 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities were legally unenforceable.
1951 London’s Royal Festival Hall opened with the Festival of Britain.
1951 The United States Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees begin their closed door hearings into the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman.
1951 – The Kentucky Derby was televised for the first time.
1951 Christopher Cross, American musician, was born.
1952 Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict landed a plane at the North Pole.
1960 The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, opened in Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.
1960 – The Anne Frank House opened in Amsterdam.
1963 The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responded with violent force to stop the “Birmingham campaign” protesters.
1973 The Sears Tower in Chicago was topped out as the world’s tallest building.
1978 The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (later known as “spam“) was sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
1986 Twenty-one people were killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb exploded in an airliner (Flight UL512) at Colomb airport in Sri Lanka.
1991 The Declaration of Windhoek was signed.
1999 Oklahoma City was slammed by an F5 tornado killing forty-two people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. One of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak, this was the strongest tornado ever recorded with wind speeds of up to 318 mph.
2000 The sport of geocaching began, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.
2002 A military MiG-21 aircraft crashed into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight.
2003 – New Hampshire’s famous Old Man of the Mountain collapsed.
2006 Armavia Flight 967 crashed into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia
May 3 in history
03/05/20121469 Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and political author was born (d. 1527).
1491 Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga was baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I.
1494 Christopher Columbus first sighted what is now known as Jamaica.
1715 Edmund Halley’s total solar eclipse.
1768 Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and industrialist, was born (d. 1838).
1791 The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitutionin Europe) was proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1802 Washington, D.C. was incorporated as a city.
1808 Finnish War: Sweden lost the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia.
1808 Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels were fired upon near Príncipe Pío hill.
1815 Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples was defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war.
1820 Missionary John Butler turned the first furrow at Kerikeri, becoming the first to use a European plough in New Zealand.
1830 The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway was opened – the first steam hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.
1837 The University of Athens was founded.
1844 Richard D’Oyly Carte, English theatrical impresario was born (d. 1901).
1849 The May Uprising in Dresden began – the last of the German revolutions of 1848.
1860 Charles XV of Sweden-Norway was crowned king of Sweden.
1867 The Hudson’s Bay Company gave up all claims to Vancouver Island.
1877 Labatt Park, the oldest continually operating baseball grounds in the world had its first game.
1887 Margaret Cruickshank became the first woman to be registered as a doctor in New Zealand.
1898 Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, was born (d. 1978).
1901 The Great Fire of 1901 began in Jacksonville, Florida.
1903 Bing Crosby, American singer and actor, was born (d. 1977).
1913 Raja Harishchandra the first full-length Indian feature film was released.
1915 The poem In Flanders Fields was written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.
1919 Pete Seeger, American singer, was born.
1920 A Bolshevik coup failsedin the Democratic Republic of Georgia.
1921 Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer was born (d. 1989).
1921 Joe Ames, American singer, was born (d. 2007).
1928 Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China.
1933 Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman to head the United States Mint.
1933 James Brown, American singer and dancer, was born (d. 2006).
1934 Frankie Valli, American singer (The Four Seasons), was born.
1937 Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
1942 World War II: Japanese naval troops invaded Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo .
1945 World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.
1946 International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
1947 New post-war Japanese constitution went into effect.
1948 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities were legally unenforceable.
1951 London’s Royal Festival Hall opened with the Festival of Britain.
1951 The United States Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees begin their closed door hearings into the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman.
1951 – The Kentucky Derby was televised for the first time.
1951 Christopher Cross, American musician, was born.
1952 Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict landed a plane at the North Pole.
1960 The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, opened in Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.
1960 – The Anne Frank House opened in Amsterdam.
1963 The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responded with violent force to stop the “Birmingham campaign” protesters.
1973 The Sears Tower in Chicago was topped out as the world’s tallest building.
1978 The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (later known as “spam“) was sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
1986 Twenty-one people were killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb exploded in an airliner (Flight UL512) at Colomb airport in Sri Lanka.
1991 The Declaration of Windhoek was signed.
1999 Oklahoma City was slammed by an F5 tornado killing forty-two people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. One of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak, this was the strongest tornado ever recorded with wind speeds of up to 318 mph.
2000 The sport of geocaching began, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.
2002 A military MiG-21 aircraft crashed into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight.
2003 – New Hampshire’s famous Old Man of the Mountain collapsed.
2006 Armavia Flight 967 crashed into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors.
Sourced from NZ History Online & WIkipedia
May 3 in history
03/05/2011On May 3:
1469 Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and political author was born (d. 1527).
1491 Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga was baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I.
1494 Christopher Columbus first sighted what is now known as Jamaica.
1715 Edmund Halley’s total solar eclipse.
1768 Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and industrialist, was born (d. 1838).
1791 The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitutionin Europe) was proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1802 Washington, D.C. was incorporated as a city.
![]() |
![]() |
1808 Finnish War: Sweden lost the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia.
1808 Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels were fired upon near Príncipe Pío hill.
The Third of May 1808 by Francisco Goya
1815 Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples was defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war.
1820 Missionary John Butler turned the first furrow at Kerikeri, becoming the first to use a European plough in New Zealand.
1830 The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway was opened – the first steam hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.
1837 The University of Athens was founded.
![]() |
1844 Richard D’Oyly Carte, English theatrical impresario was born (d. 1901).
1849 The May Uprising in Dresden began – the last of the German revolutions of 1848.
1860 Charles XV of Sweden-Norway was crowned king of Sweden.
1867 The Hudson’s Bay Company gave up all claims to Vancouver Island.
1877 Labatt Park, the oldest continually operating baseball grounds in the world had its first game.
1887 Margaret Cruickshank became the first woman to be registered as a doctor in New Zealand.
1898 Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, was born (d. 1978).
1901 The Great Fire of 1901 began in Jacksonville, Florida.
1903 Bing Crosby, American singer and actor, was born (d. 1977).
1913 Raja Harishchandra the first full-length Indian feature film was released.
1915 The poem In Flanders Fields was written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.
1919 Pete Seeger, American singer, was born.
1920 A Bolshevik coup failsedin the Democratic Republic of Georgia.
1921 Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer was born (d. 1989).
1921 Joe Ames, American singer, was born (d. 2007).
1928 Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China.
1933 Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first woman to head the United States Mint.
1933 James Brown, American singer and dancer, was born (d. 2006).
1934 Frankie Valli, American singer (The Four Seasons), was born.
1937 Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
1942 World War II: Japanese naval troops invaded Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo .
1945 World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.
1946 International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
1947 New post-war Japanese constitution went into effect.
1948 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities were legally unenforceable.
1951 London’s Royal Festival Hall opened with the Festival of Britain.
1951 The United States Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees begin their closed door hearings into the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman.
1951 – The Kentucky Derby was televised for the first time.
1951 Christopher Cross, American musician, was born.
1952 Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict landed a plane at the North Pole.
1960 The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, openedin Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.
1960 – The Anne Frank House opened in Amsterdam.
1963 The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responded with violent force to stop the “Birmingham campaign” protesters.
1973 The Sears Tower in Chicago was topped out as the world’s tallest building.
1978 The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (later known as “spam“) was sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
1986 Twenty-one people were killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb exploded in an airliner (Flight UL512) at Colomb airport in Sri Lanka.
1991 The Declaration of Windhoek was signed.
1999 Oklahoma City was slammed by an F5 tornado killing forty-two people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. One of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak, this was the strongest tornado ever recorded with wind speeds of up to 318 mph.
2000 The sport of geocaching began, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.
2002 A military MiG-21 aircraft crashed into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight.
2003 – New Hampshire’s famous Old Man of the Mountain collapsed.
2006 Armavia Flight 967 crashed into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors.
Sourced from NZ History Online & WIkipedia
May 29 in history
29/05/2010On May 29:
363 Roman Emperor Julian defeated the Sassanid army in the Battle of Ctesiphon, under the walls of the Sassanid capital, but was unable to take the city.
1167 Battle of Monte Porzio – A Roman army supporting Pope Alexander III was defeated by Christian of Buch and Rainald of Dassel.
1176 Battle of Legnano: The Lombard League defeated Emperor Frederick I.
1630 Charles II of England was born (d. 1685).
1414 Council of Constance.
1453 Byzantine-Ottoman Wars: Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih sacked and captured Constantinople after a siege, ending the Byzantine Empire.
1660 English Restoration: Charles II (on his birthday) was restored to the throne of Great Britain.
1677 Treaty of Middle Plantation established peace between the Virginia colonists and the local Natives.
1727 Peter II became Tsar of Russia.
1733 The right of Canadians to keep Indian slaves was upheld.
1780 American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Waxhaws Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton massacred Colonel Abraham Buford’s continentals.
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1790 Rhode Island became the last of the original United States‘ colonies to ratify the Constitution and was admitted as the 13th U.S. state.
1848 Wisconsin was admitted as the 30th U.S. state.
1864 Emperor Maximilian of Mexico arrived in Mexico for the first time.
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1867 The Austro-Hungarian agreement – Ausgleich (“the Compromise“) – was born through Act 12, which established the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
1868 The assassination of Michael Obrenovich III, Prince of Serbia.
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1874 G. K. Chesterton, English novelist, was born (d. 1936).
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1886 Chemist John Pemberton placed his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, it appeared in the Atlanta Journal.
1900 – N’Djamena was founded as Fort-Lamy by French commander Émile Gentil.
1903 Bob Hope, British-born comedian and actor, was born (d. 2003).
1903 May coup d’etat: Alexander Obrenovich, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, were assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand (Crna Ruka) organization.
1906 T.H. White, British author, was born (d. 1964).
1913 Igor Stravinsky‘s ballet score The Rite of Spring received its premiere performance in Paris, provoking a riot.
Nicholas Roerich‘s 1913 set design for Part I: Adoration of the Earth.
1914 Ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland sank in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the loss of 1,024 lives.
1917 – John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, was born (d. 1963).
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1919 – Einstein’s theory of general relativity was tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington’s observation of a total solar eclipse in Principe and by Andrew Crommelin in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil.
1919 The Republic of Prekmurje founded.
1924 AEK Athens FC was established on the anniversary of the siege of Constantinople by the Turks.
Prekmurje |
1932 World War I Veterans began to assemble in Washington, DC in the Bonus Army to request cash bonuses promised to them to be paid in 1945.
Prekmurje |
1935 The Hoover Dam was completed.
1939 Albanian fascist leader Tefik Mborja is appointed as member of the Italian Chamber of Fasces and Corporations.
1940 The first flight of the F4U Corsair.
1941 Doug Scott, British mountaineer, was born.
1942 Bing Crosby, the Ken Darby Singers and the John Scott Trotter Orchestra recorded Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”.
1945 Gary Brooker, musician (Procol Harum), was born.
1945 First combat mission of the Consolidated B-32 Dominator heavy bomber.
1948 Creation of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation
1950 The St. Roch, the first ship to circumnavigate North America, arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia .
1953 Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay’s (adopted) 39th birthday.
1954 First of the annual Bilderberg conferences.
1959 Rupert Everett, English actor, was born.
1961 Melissa Etheridge, American musician, was born.
1963 Tracey E. Bregman, American actress, was born.
1967 Noel Gallagher, English musician (former Oasis), was born.
1969 General strike in Córdoba, Argentina, leading to the Cordobazo civil unrest.
1973 Tom Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.
1975 Melanie Brown, English musician and actress (Spice Girls), was born.
1978 Adam Rickitt, British actor, was born.
1982 – Pope John Paul II became the first pontiff to visit Canterbury Cathedral.
1985 – Heysel Stadium disaster: At the European Cup final in Brussels 39 football fans died and hundreds are injured when a dilapidated retaining wall collapses after Liverpool F.C. fans breached a fence separating them from Juventus F.C. fans.
1985 Amputee Steve Fonyo completed cross-Canada marathon at Victoria, British Columbia, after 14 months.
1988 U.S. President Ronald Reagan began his first visit to the Soviet Union.
1990 The Russian parliament elected Boris Yeltsin president of the Russian SFSR.
1999 Olusegun Obasanjo took office as President of Nigeria, the first elected and civilian head of state in Nigeria after 16 years of military rule.
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1999 Space Shuttle Discovery completed the first docking with the International Space Station.
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1999 – Charlotte Perrelli win the Eurovision Song Contest 1999 for Sweden with the song Take Me to Your Heaven.
2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruled that disabled golfer Casey Martin could use a cart to ride in at tournaments.
2004 The World War II Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipeida.
May 3 in history
03/05/2010On May 3:
1469 Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and political author was born (d. 1527).
1491 Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga was baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I.
1494 Christopher Columbus first sighted what is now known as Jamaica.
1715 Edmund Halley’s total solar eclipse.
1768 Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and industrialist, was born (d. 1838).
1791 The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitutionin Europe) was proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1802 Washington, D.C. was incorporated as a city.
![]() |
![]() |
1808 Finnish War: Sweden lost the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia.
1808 Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels were fired upon near Príncipe Pío hill.
The Third of May 1808 by Francisco Goya
1815 Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples was defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war.
1820 Missionary John Butler turned the first furrow at Kerikeri, becoming the first to use a European plough in New Zealand.
1830 The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway was opened – the first steam hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.
1837 The University of Athens was founded.
![]() |
1844 Richard D’Oyly Carte, English theatrical impresario was born (d. 1901).
1849 The May Uprising in Dresden began – the last of the German revolutions of 1848.
1860 Charles XV of Sweden-Norway was crowned king of Sweden.
1867 The Hudson’s Bay Company gave up all claims to Vancouver Island.
1877 Labatt Park, the oldest continually operating baseball grounds in the world had its first game.
1887 Margaret Cruickshank became the first woman to be registered as a doctor in New Zealand.
1898 Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, was born(d. 1978).
1901 The Great Fire of 1901 began in Jacksonville, Florida.
1903 Bing Crosby, American singer and actor, was born (d. 1977).
1913 Raja Harishchandra the first full-length Indian feature film was released.
1915 The poem In Flanders Fields was written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.
1919 Pete Seeger, American singer, was born.
1920 A Bolshevik coup failsedin the Democratic Republic of Georgia.
1921 Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer was born (d. 1989).
1921 Joe Ames, American singer, was born (d. 2007).
1928 Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China.
1933 Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first woman to head the United States Mint.
1933 James Brown, American singer and dancer, was born (d. 2006).
1934 Frankie Valli, American singer (The Four Seasons), was born.
1937 Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
1942 World War II: Japanese naval troops invaded Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo .
1945 World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.
1946 International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
1947 New post-war Japanese constitution went into effect.
1948 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities were legally unenforceable.
1951 London’s Royal Festival Hall openedwith the Festival of Britain.
1951 The United States Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees begin their closed door hearings into the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman.
1951 – The Kentucky Derby was televised for the first time.
1951 Christopher Cross, American musician, was born.
1952 Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict landed a plane at the North Pole.
1960 The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, openedin Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.
1960 – The Anne Frank House opensedin Amsterdam.
1963 The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responded with violent force to stop the “Birmingham campaign” protesters.
1973 The Sears Tower in Chicago was topped out as the world’s tallest building.
1978 The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (later known as “spam“) was sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
1986 Twenty-one people were killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb exploded in an airliner (Flight UL512) at Colomb airport in Sri Lanka.
1991 The Declaration of Windhoek was signed.
1999 Oklahoma City was slammed by an F5 tornado killing forty-two people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. One of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak, this was the strongest tornado ever recorded with wind speeds of up to 318 mph.
2000 The sport of geocaching began, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.
2002 A military MiG-21 aircraft crashed into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight.
2003 New Hampshire’s famous Old Man of the Mountain collapsed.
2006 Armavia Flight 967 crashed into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors.
Sourced from NZ History Online & WIkipedia