Today May 3rd 2009 this day in history Read more below to view events, deaths, births, Holidays observances and video clips. Last database updated: Jan 17th, 2009
Events
1491 – Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga is baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I.
1494 – Christopher Columbus first sights land that will be called Jamaica.
1715 – Edmund Halley s total solar eclipse (the last one visible in London, United Kingdom for almost 900 years).
1791 – The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitution in Europe) is proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1802 – Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city.
1808 – Finnish War: Sweden loses the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia.
1808 – Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels who rose up on May 2 are fired upon near Príncipe Pío hill.
1815 – Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples is defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war.
1830 – The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway is opened. It is the first steam hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.
1837 – The University of Athens is founded.
1849 – The May Uprising in Dresden begins – the last of the German revolutions of 1848.
Births
1860 – Charles XV of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Sweden.
1867 – The Hudson s Bay Company gives up all claims to Vancouver Island.
1901 – The Great Fire of 1901 begins in Jacksonville, Florida.
1916 – The leaders of the Easter Rising are executed in Dublin.
1921 – West Virginia imposes the first state sales tax.
1924 – Aleph Zadik Aleph is formed in Omaha, Nebraska by Sam Beber.
1928 – Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China.
1933 – Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first woman to head the United States Mint.
1937 – Gone with the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
1939 – The All India Forward Bloc is formed by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.
1942 – World War II: Japanese naval troops invade Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo that results in the Battle of the Coral Sea between Japanese forces and forces from the United States and Australia.
1945 – World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.
1946 – The International Military Tribunal for the Far East begins in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
1947 – New post-war Japanese constitution goes into effect.
1948 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable.
1951 – London s Royal Festival Hall opens.
1951 – The Festival of Britain opens.
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 is televised for the first time.
1952 – Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict of the United States land a plane at the North Pole.
1957 – Walter O Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles, California.
1960 – The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, opens in New York City s Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.
1960 – The Anne Frank House opens in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
1963 – The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responds with violent force to stop the Birmingham campaign protesters. Images of the violent suppression are transmitted worldwide, bringing newfound attention to the African-American Civil Rights Movement.
1973 – The Sears Tower in Chicago is topped out as the world s tallest building.
1978 – The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (which would later become known as spam) is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
1979 – Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher becomes the United Kingdom s first female prime minister as the Labour government is ousted in parliamentary elections.
1986 – Twenty-one people are killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb explodes in an airliner (Flight UL512) at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka.
1987 – A crash by Bobby Allison at the Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama fencing at the start-finish line would lead NASCAR to develop restrictor plate racing the following season both at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega.
1991 – The Declaration of Windhoek is signed.
1999 – Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is slammed by an F5 tornado killing forty-two people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. The tornado was one of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak.
1999 – Stephen Hendry defeats Mark Williams 18-11 to win the World Snooker Championship for a record seventh time.
2000 – The sport of geocaching begins, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.
2001 – The United States loses its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission was formed in 1947.
2002 – A military MiG-21 aircraft crashes into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight.
2003 – New Hampshire s famous Old Man of the Mountain collapses.
2006 – Armavia Flight 967 crashes into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors.
2006 – Zacarias Moussaoui is sentenced to life in prison in Alexandria, Virginia.
2007 – British girl Madeleine McCann is snatched from her bed in holiday apartment 5A of the Ocean Club Holiday Resort in Praia da Luz, Portugal, and is still missing to this day.
Deaths
612 – Constantine III, Byzantine Emperor (d. 641)
1415 – Cecily Neville, mother of Edward IV of England and Richard III of England (d. 1495)
1428 – Pedro González de Mendoza, Spanish cardinal and statesman (d. 1495)
1446 – Margaret of York, wife of Charles I, Duke of Burgundy (d. 1503)
1469 – Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and political author (d. 1527)
1662 – Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann, German architect (d. 1736)
1695 – Henri Pitot, Italian-born French engineer (d. 1771)
1713 – Alexis Clairault, French mathematician (d. 1765)
1761 – August von Kotzebue, German dramatist (d. 1819)
1764 – Elisabeth of France, sister of Louis XVI, guillotined (d. 1794)
1768 – Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and industrialist (d. 1838)
1826 – Charles, Crown Prince of Sweden-Norway (d. 1872)
1835 – Alfred Austin, English poet (d. 1913)
1844 – Richard D Oyly Carte, English theatrical impresario (d. 1901)
1849 – Jacob August Riis , American journalist (d. 1914)
1849 – Bernhard von Bülow, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1929)
1857 – George Gore, American baseball player (d. 1933)
1859 – Andy Adams, American author (d. 1935)
1860 – John Scott Haldane, Scottish physiologist (d. 1936)
1860 – Vito Volterra, Italian mathematician (d. 1940)
1861 – Emmett Dalton, American outlaw (d. 1937)
1867 – J.T. Hearne, English cricketer (d. 1944)
1870 – Princess Helena Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein (d. 1948)
1873 – Pavlo Skoropadsky, Ukrainian general (d. 1945)
1874 – François Coty, French perfume manufacturer (d. 1934)
1874 – V. Walfrid Ekman, Swedish oceanographer (d. 1954)
1877 – Karl Abraham, German psychoanalyst (d. 1925)
1879 – Fergus McMaster, Australian businessman (d. 1950)
1886 – Marcel Dupré, French organist and composer (d. 1971)
1888 – Beulah Bondi, American actress (d. 1981)
1891 – Tadeusz Peiper, Polish poet (d. 1969)
1892 – George Paget Thomson, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1975)
1893 – Konstantine Gamsakhurdia, Georgian writer and public benefactor (d. 1975)
1895 – Cornelius Van Til, philosopher and Christian apologist (d. 1987)
1896 – Dodie Smith, English novelist and playwright (d. 1990)
1896 – Karl Allmenroder, German World War I Ace (d. 1917)
1898 – Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel (d. 1978)
1901 – Gino Cervi, Italian actor (d. 1974)
1902 – Alfred Kastler, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1984)
1903 – Bing Crosby, American singer and actor (d. 1977)
1905 – Werner Fenchel, German mathematician (d. 1988)
1905 – Sebastian Shaw, English actor (d. 1994)
1906 – Anna E. Roosevelt, American radio personality, daughter of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (d. 1975)
1906 – Mary Astor, Academy Award-winning American actress (d. 1987)
1910 – Norman Corwin, American radio pioneer
1912 – Virgil Fox, American organist (d. 1980)
1913 – William Inge, American playwright (d. 1973)
1915 – Stu Hart, Canadian professional wrestler and trainer (d. 2003)
1916 – Léopold Simoneau, French Canadian tenor (d. 2006)
1917 – Betty Comden, American lyricist (d. 2006)
1918 – Ted Bates, English former footballer (d. 2003)
1919 – John Cullen Murphy, American comic strip artist (d. 2004)
1919 – Pete Seeger, American singer
1920 – John Lewis, American jazz pianist and composer (Modern Jazz Quartet) (d. 2001)
1921 – Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer (d. 1989)
1921 – Joe Ames, American singer (d. 2007)
1922 – Len Shackleton, English former footballer (d. 2000)
1923 – Ralph Hall, American politician
1923 – George Hadjinikos, Greek pianist and conductor
1924 – Yehuda Amichai, Israeli poet (d. 2000)
1924 – Ken Tyrrell, English founder of eponymous F1 racing team (d. 2001)
1928 – Dave Dudley, American singer (d. 2003)
1932 – Robert Osborne, American film historian
1933 – James Brown, American singer and dancer (d. 2006)
1933 – Steven Weinberg, American physicist, Nobel laureate
1933 – Alex Cord, American actor
1934 – Henry Cooper, English boxer
1934 – Georges Moustaki, Egyptian born Greek-French singer and songwriter
1934 – Frankie Valli, American singer (The Four Seasons)
1935 – Ron Popeil, American inventor
1937 – Nélida Piñon, Brazilian writer
1938 – Chris Cannizzaro, American baseball player
1940 – Konrad Conny Plank, German record producer and musician
1940 – Clemens Westerhof, Dutch football manager
1941 – Edward Monk Malloy, American university president
1942 – Vera Cáslavská, Czech gymnast
1942 – Dave Marash, American journalist
1942 – C.L. Otter, American politician, governor of Idaho
1943 – Jim Risch, American politician, junior senator of Idaho
1945 – Davey Lopes, American baseball player and coach
1946 – Norm Chow, American football coach
1946 – Greg Gumbel, American broadcaster
1946 – Silvino Francisco, South African snooker player
1948 – Chris Mulkey, American actor
1947 – Doug Henning, Canadian magician (d. 2000)
1949 – Ron Wyden, American politician
1951 – Christopher Cross, American musician
1951 – Tatyana Tolstaya, Russian writer
1951 – Tuula Palaste-Eerola, Finnish architect and politician
1952 – Allan Wells, British athlete
1952 – Caitlin Clarke. American actress (d. 2004)
1954 – Gary Young, American drummer (Pavement)
1955 – David Hookes, Australian cricketer (d. 2004)
1956 – Marc Bellemare, French Canadian lawyer and politician
1957 – Rod Langway, American ice hockey player
1958 – Kevin Kilner, American actor
1958 – Sandi Toksvig, Danish comedian and radio presenter
1959 – David Ball, English musician (Soft Cell)
1959 – Uma Bharati, Indian politician
1959 – Ben Elton, British comedian and author
1960 – Amy Steel, American actress
1961 – Steve McClaren, English football manager
1961 – Joe Murray, American cartoonist
1961 – David Vitter American politician
1962 – Anders Graneheim, Swedish bodybuilder
1963 – Jeff Hornacek, American basketball player
1963 – Jamie Reeves, British strongman
1963 – Sally Whittaker, English actress
1964 – Ron Hextall, Canadian ice hockey player
1965 – Rob Brydon, Welsh comedian
1965 – Nina Garcia, Colombian-American fashion expert and television personality
1965 – John Jensen, Danish footballer
1966 – Peter Abbay, American actor
1966 – Firdous Bamji, Indian-American actor
1966 – Darren Morgan, Welsh snooker player
1968 – Shane Minor, American singer
1969 – Daryl F. Mallett, American writer/editor
1970 – Jeffrey Sebelia, American fashion designer
1971 – Damon Dash, American label executive
1971 – Josey Scott, American singer (Saliva)
1972 – Shonie Carter, American MMA fighter
1972 – Suzi Suzuki, former Japanese adult actress
1974 – Princess Haya bint Hussein of Jordan
1975 – Maksim Mrvica, Croatian pianist
1975 – Eva Santolaria, Spanish actress
1975 – Dulé Hill, American actor
1976 – Jeff Halpern, American ice hockey player
1977 – Mashima Hiro, Japanese Mangaka of Rave Master and Fairy Tail
1977 – Ryan Dempster, American baseball player
1978 – Paul Banks, American vocalist (Interpol)
1978 – Christina Hendricks, American actress
1978 – Lawrence Tynes, American football player
1979 – Steve Mack, American professional wrestler
1980 – Zuzana Ondrášková, Czech tennis player
1980 – Marcel Vigneron, American chef (Top Chef)
1981 – Farrah Franklin, American singer (former member of Destiny s Child)
1982 – Igor Olshansky, Ukrainian-born American football player
1983 – Joseph Addai, American football player
1983 – Romeo Castelen, Dutch footballer
1983 – Márton Fülöp, Hungarian footballer
1983 – Myriam Fares, Lebanese singer
1984 – Nam Sang-mi, South Korean actress and model
1984 – Cheryl Burke, American professional dancer
1985 – Greg Raposo, American pop/rock singer
Holidays and observances
1152 – Matilda of Boulogne, Queen of England (b. 1105)
1160 – Peter Lombard, Italian scholar and bishop (b. c. 1100)
1270 – King Béla IV of Hungary (b. 1206)
1294 – John I, Duke of Brabant
1481 – Mehmed II, Ottoman Sultan (b. 1432)
1598 – Anna Guarini, Italian singer (b. 1563)
1606 – Henry Garnet, English Jesuit (executed) (b. 1555)
1622 – Pedro Páez, Spanish Jesuit missionary (b. 1564)
1679 – James Sharp, English archbishop (assassinated) (b. 1613)
1693 – Claude de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, French courtier (b. 1607)
1704 – Heinrich Ignaz Biber, Bohemian composer (b. 1644)
1724 – John Leverett the Younger, American President of Harvard (b. 1662)
1750 – John Willison, Scottish minister and writer (b. 1680)
1752 – Samuel Ogle, British provincial Governor of Maryland (b. c.1692)
1758 – Pope Benedict XIV (b. 1675)
1763 – George Psalmanazar, British impostor (b. 1679)
1764 – Francesco Algarotti, Italian philosopher (b. 1712)
1779 – John Winthrop, American astronomer (b. 1714)
1793 – Martin Gerbert, German theologian and historian (b. 1720)
1839 – Ferdinando Paer, Italian composer (b. 1771)
1856 – Adolphe Charles Adam, French composer (b. 1803)
1918 – Charlie Soong, Christian Missionary
1921 – Théodore Pilette, Belgian racing driver (b. 1883)
1942 – Thorvald Stauning, Prime Minister of Denmark (b. 1873)
1958 – Frank Foster, English cricketer (b. 1889)
1969 – Zakir Hussain, 3rd President of India, (b. 1897)
1972 – Bruce Cabot, American film actor (b. 1904)
1987 – Dalida, French singer (b. 1933)
1988 – Lev Semenovich Pontryagin, Russian mathematician (b. 1908)
1989 – Christine Jorgensen, American transsexual (b. 1926)
1989 – Edward Ochab, Polish Communist politician (b. 1906)
1991 – Jerzy Kosinski, Polish-born writer (b. 1933)
1991 – Mohammed Abdel Wahab, Egyptian singer and composer (b. 1907)
1992 – George Murphy, American dancer, actor and politician (b. 1902)
1994 – Ezra Taft Benson, thirteenth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (b. 1899)
1996 – Alex Kellner, American baseball player (b. 1924)
1996 – Jack Weston, American actor (b. 1924)
1997 – Sébastien Enjolras, French racing driver (b. 197)
1997 – Narciso Yepes, Spanish classical guitarist (b. 1927)
1999 – Joe Adcock, American baseball player (b. 1927)
1999 – Steve Chiasson, Canadian ice hockey player (b. 1967)
2000 – John Joseph Cardinal O Connor, Catholic Archbishop of New York (b. 1920)
2001 – Billy Higgins, American drummer (b. 1936)
2002 – Barbara Castle, British politician (b. 1910)
2002 – Evgeny Svetlanov, Russian composer and pianist (b. 1928)
2003 – Suzy Parker, American actress (b. 1932)
2004 – Anthony Ainley, British actor (b. 1932)
2004 – Ken Downing, British racing driver (b. 1917)
2004 – Darrell Johnson, American baseball player (b. 1928)
2006 – Karel Appel, Dutch painter (b. 1921)
2006 – Pramod Mahajan, Indian politician (b. 1949)
2006 – Earl Woods, Athlete and father of Tiger Woods (b. 1932)
2007 – Warja Honegger-Lavater, Swiss illustrator (b. 1913)
2007 – Wally Schirra, American astronaut (b. 1923)
2007 – Knock Yokoyama, Japanese comedian and politician (b. 1932)
2008 – Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, Spanish former Primer Minister (b. 1926)
