Today in history
By
| YEAR | DAY | EVENT |
| 1010 | May 3 | Ansfried (~69), 9th bishop of Utrecht (995-1010), saint, died. |
| 1455 | May 3 | Jews fled Spain. |
| 1568 | May 3 | French forces in Florida slaughtered hundreds of Spanish. |
| 1715 | May 3 | Edmund Halley observed a total eclipse phenomenon: “Baily’s Beads.” |
| 1810 | May 3 | Lord Byron swam the Hellespont. |
| 1830 | May 3 | The 1st regular steam train passenger service started. |
| 1855 | May 3 | Macon B. Allen became the first African American to be admitted to the Bar in Massachusetts. |
| 1859 | May 3 | France declared war on Austria. |
| 1861 | May 3 | Lincoln asked for 42,000 Army Volunteers and another 18,000 seamen. |
| 1865 | May 3 | President Lincoln’s funeral train arrived in Springfield, Illinois. |
| 1921 | May 3 | West Virginia imposed the first state sales tax. |
| 1926 | May 3 | There was a British general strike and 3 million workers supported the miners. The strike lasted 9 days. |
| 1929 | May 3 | Prussia banned anti-fascists |
| 1931 | May 3 | Frank Hoyt Losey (59), composer, died. |
| 1938 | May 3 | The concentration camp at Flossenburg opened. |
| 1942 | May 3 | The Luftwaffe bombed Exeter. |
| 1945 | May 3 | Japanese forces on Okinawa launched their only major counter-offensive, but failed to break the American lines. |
| 1948 | May 3 | Pulitzer Prizes were awarded to playwright Tennessee Williams for “A Streetcar Named Desire” and to novelist James Michener for “Tales of the South Pacific.” |
| 1951 | May 3 | The Festival of Britain, a national exhibition, officially opened. |
| 1954 | May 3 | Pulitzer prize was awarded to Charles A. Lindbergh and John Patrick. |
| 1957 | May 3 | A low flying Navy bomber, while practicing evasion maneuvers, sheared two high-voltage lines in the East Bay of San Francisco causing a power outage in SF and the Peninsula. |
| 1971 | May 3 | The National Public Radio “All Things Considered” program premiered on 112 NPR stations. NPR, the US national, non-commercial radio network, was founded in 1970 and hit the airwaves in April, 1971. |
| 1978 | May 3 | “Sun Day” fell on a Thursday as thousands of people extolling the virtues of solar energy held events across the country. |
| 1979 | May 3 | Britain held general elections. Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher was chosen to become Britain’s first female prime minister as the Tories ousted the incumbent Labor government in parliamentary elections. In 2008 Claire Berlinski authored “There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.” |
| 1988 | May 3 | The White House acknowledged that first lady Nancy Reagan had used astrological advice to help schedule her husband’s activities. The unflattering revelations surfaced in a yet-to-be published memoir by former chief of staff Donald Regan. |
| 1990 | May 3 | The US federal government approved the use of the drug AZT to treat children infected with the AIDS virus. |
| 1991 | May 3 | The US government reported the nation’s civilian unemployment rate fell in April to 6.6%. |
| 1992 | May 3 | In Los Angeles, soldiers continued to patrol streets and guard fire-gutted and ransacked stores in the wake of rioting that erupted following the Rodney King-taped beating acquittals. |
| 1993 | May 3 | “Kiss of the Spider Woman” opened at Broadhurst in NYC for 906 performances. John Kander composed the music and Fred Ebb (d.2004) wrote the lyrics. |
| 1995 | May 3 | The US government reported that its Index of Leading Economic Indicators dropped half a percentage point in March 1995, its biggest tumble in two years. |
| 1997 | May 3 | World chess champion Garry Kasparov won the first game of his rematch with IBM’s Deep Blue computer. However, he lost the six-game match. |
| 1998 | May 3 | It was reported that the drugs angiostatin and endostatin eradicated cancer in mice and that human trials could begin within a year. The drugs were discovered by Harvard scientist Judah Folkman. Their operation was explained in 1999 by researchers at Duke. |
| 1999 | May 3 | In Baltimore the Cuban baseball team beat the Baltimore Orioles 12-6. 7 members missed the departure the next day and one coach, Rigoberto Betancourt Herrera, was reported to have defected, as the others over slept. The 6 stragglers departed May 5. |
| 2000 | May 3 | Gen. Wesley Clark left his post as NATO’s supreme allied commander. He was replaced by Gen. Joseph Ralston. |
| 2001 | May 3 | An estimated 36.4 million people tuned in to watch Tennessee nurse Tina Wesson win as the winner of “Survivor 2,” following a 42 day stint in the “Survivor: The Australian Outback” on CBS. |
| 2002 | May 3 | The US Labor Dept. reported the April jobless rate at 6%, up .3% |
| 2003 | May 3 | In the Kentucky Derby Jose Santos rode Funny Cide to victory. |
| 2004 | May 3 | Marvin Runyon (79), former postmaster general, died in Nashville, Tenn. |
| 2005 | May 3 | American troops and Afghan police killed 64 rebels and captured six during a battle in the mountains of southern Afghanistan. 9 Afghan troops and one policeman were also killed in the clashes in the southern provinces of Zabul and Kandahar. |
| 2006 | May 3 | In their second meeting at the White House, President Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to keep pressing Iran on its nuclear program as other allies took the issue to the United Nations. |
| 2007 | May 3 | A US House panel called on the VA chief to explain why top officials got hefty bonuses even as veteran’s care deteriorated. |
| 2008 | May 3 | Big Brown pulled won the Kentucky Derby 4 3/4 lengths ahead of the filly Eight Belles, who was euthanized by injection on the track with 2 broken ankles. |
| 2009 | May 3 | In California Briant Rodriguez (3) was kidnapped by 2 gunmen who broke into his family’s home in San Bernadino. |
| 2010 | May 3 | Faisal Shahzad (30), a US citizen who had recently returned from a five-month trip to his native Pakistan, was arrested at a New York airport on charges that on May 1 he drove a bomb-laden SUV meant to cause a fireball in Times Square. |
| 2011 | May 3 | US analysts scoured a trove of secrets grabbed from Osama bin Laden’s fortified hideout for evidence of the slain terrorist’s support network in Pakistan. |
| 2012 | May 3 | US federal authorities said a Miami-based crime ring stat stole at least $80 million worth of prescription drugs has been broken up following a 3-year FBI probe. 22 people were charged in New Jersey, Connecticut and Miami. |
| 2013 | May 3 | President Barack Obama in Mexico City said he wants to set aside old stereotypes that have created misunderstanding between Mexico and the United States. |
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