TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: DEC 3
1468 Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano succeed their father, Piero de Medici, as rulers of Florence, Italy.
1586 Sir Thomas Herriot introduces potatoes to England from Colombia
1685 Charles II bars Jews from settling in Stockholm Sweden
1762 France cedes to Spain all lands west of the Mississippi–the territory known as Upper Louisiana.
1792 The trial of France’s King Louis XVI began. He was eventually put to death for the 33 charges.
1818 Illinois admitted into the Union as the 21st state.
1847 Frederick Douglass and Martin R. Delaney establish the North Star, and anti-slavery paper.
1854 Eureka Stockade: In what is claimed by many to be the birth of Australian democracy, more than 20 goldminers at Ballarat, Victoria, are killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences
1906 The U.S. Supreme Court orders Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) leaders extradited to Idaho for trial in the Steunenberg murder case.
1910 First public demonstration of neon lights
1918 The Allied Conference ends in London where they decide that Germany must pay for the war.
1927 First Laurel & Hardy movie released
1931 Alka Seltzer goes on sale
1946 US government asks UN to order dictator Franco out of Spain
1948 The “Pumpkin Papers” came to public light. The House Un-American Activities Committee announced that former Communist spy Whittaker Chambers had produced microfilm of secret documents hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm.
1953 Eisenhower criticizes McCarthy for saying communists are in Republican party
1962 Edith Spurlock Sampson sworn-in as 1st US black female judge
1964 “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” 1st airs on TV
1967 1st human heart transplant performed in South Africa by Dr Christiaan Barnard on Louis Washkansky
1970 Ayatollah Khomeini takes office. The Iranian religious leader was a leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
1973 Pioneer 10 sent back the first close-up images of Jupiter. The first outer-planetary probe had been launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, on March 2, 1972.
1977 The State Department proposes the admission of 10,000 more Vietnamese refugees to the United States.
1979 Eleven are dead and eight injured in a mad rush to see a rock band (The Who) at a concert in Cincinnati, Ohio.
1984 Bhopal disaster: Union Carbide pesticide plant leak 45 tons of methyl isocyanate and other toxic compounds in Bhopal, India, kills 2,259 (official figure) – other estimates as high as 16,000 (including later deaths) and over half a million injured
1989 Presidents George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev announce the official end to the Cold War at a meeting in Malta.
1992 A test engineer for Sema Group sends the world’s first text message, using a personal computer and the Vodafone network.
1997 Golden State Warrior guard Latrell Sprewell, four-year, $32 million, contract terminated for attacking his coach P J Carlesimo
1997 Representatives of 121 nations sign the Ottawa Treaty prohibiting the manufacture or deployment of antipersonnel landmines; the People’s Republic of China, the US and the USSR do not sign.
2005 First manned rocket aircraft delivery of US Mail takes place in Mojave, Cal.
2009 Suicide bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia, kills 25 people, including three ministries of the Transitional Federal Government.
REFERENCES: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeoplehistory.com, timeandate.com, factmonster.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
