On October 3rd...

Links will open in a new window.

1656 Myles Standish, military commander of the Plymouth Colony, died.

1789 President George Washington proclaimed the first national Thanksgiving Day.

1800 Historian George Bancroft was born.

1854 Physician William C. Gorgas was born.

1859 Actress Eleonora Duse was born.

1862 The Battle of Corinth (Mississippi) began.

1867 Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine, died.

1872 Blommingdale's opened in New York, New York.

1888 A team led by Fridtjof Nansen completed the first known crossing of Greenland.

1899 J. S. Thurman patented a motor-driven vacuum cleaner.

1904 Mary McLeod Bethune opened the Daytona Normal and Industrial School.

1908 Russian exiles in Vienna, Austria, founded the newspaper Pravda.

1910 Lucy Hobbs Taylor, the first fully licensed woman dentist in the United States, died.

1916 Author James Herriot was born.

1918 Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria abdicated in favor of his eldest son, Boris II.

1920 The American Pro Football Association (now the NFL) played its first games.

1922 Rebecca Felton was appointed to the U.S. Senate by the Governor of Georgia.

1925 Author Gore Vidal was born.

1929 The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes changed its name to Yugoslavia.

1932 Iraq gained full independence from the United Kingdom.

1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia.
1935 Astronaut Charles Duke was born.

1938 Musician Eddie Cochran was born.

1941 The Maltese Falcon premiered in New York City, New York.
1941 Rock and roll singer Ernest Evans, aka Chubby Checker, was born.

1942 Germany tested its V-2 rocket for the first time.

1945 The World Federation of Trade Unions was formed.

1952 Great Britain tested its first atomic bomb.

1953 Medical researcher Florence Rena Sabin died.

1954 Minister Al Sharpton was born.
1954 Musician Stevie Ray Vaughan was born.

1955 "The Mickey Mouse Club" premiered on ABC-TV.
1955 "Captain Kangaroo" premiered on CBS-TV.

1959 Comedian Greg Proops was born.

1960 "The Andy Griffith Show" premiered on CBS-TV.

1961 The "Dick Van Dyke Show" premiered on CBS-TV.
1961 "Mr. Ed"premiered on CBS-TV.

1962 Walter M. Schirra orbited the Earth six times.
1962 Twenty-three persons were killed, and another 90 injured, when an exploding boiler rocketed through the lunchroom of a telephone company building in New York City, New York.
1962 Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee was born.

1963 Gambia attained internal self-government.

1967 An X-15 rocket aircraft set a winged-craft record with a speed of 4,534 mph.
1967 U.S. President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation establishing a National Center for Deaf-Blind Youth and Adults.
1967 Folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie died.

1968 Peruvian President Fernando Belaúnde Terry was overthrown by a military coup.

1969 Singer Gwen Stefani was born.

1975 Guy Mollet, former Prime Minister of France, died.

1985 The Space Shuttle Atlantis was launched on its maiden mission.

1990 East and West Germany were re-unified into the Federated Republic of Germany.

1992 Sinead O'Connor ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II on "Saturday Night Live."

1994 Actress Harriet Nelson died.

1995 O.J. Simpson was found "not guilty" of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

1998 Actor Roddy McDowall died.

2003 A white tiger attacked Roy Horn of the illusionist duo Siegfried & Roy during a performance in Las Vegas.

2009 Fatima, former Queen of Libya, died.

Questions or comments about this page?

This page was last updated on October 04, 2018.