May 3

Events Pre-1600 752 – Mayan king Bird Jaguar IV of Yaxchilan in modern-day Chiapas, Mexico, assumes the throne. 996 – German king Otto III chooses his cousin Bruno of Carinthia as pope following the death of Pope John XV. Bruno becomes pope under the name Gregory V. 1481 – The largest of three earthquakes strikes the island of Rhodes and causes an estimated 30,000 casualties. 1491 – Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga is baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I. 1568 – Angered by the brutal onslaught of Spanish troops at Fort Caroline, a French force burns the San Mateo fort and massacres hundreds of Spaniards.

1601–1900 1616 – Treaty of Loudun ends a French civil war. 1715 – A total solar eclipse is visible across northern Europe and northern Asia, as predicted by Edmond Halley to within four minutes accuracy. 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 after Congress abolishes the Board of Commissioners, the District's founding government. The "City of Washington" is given a mayor-council form of government. 1808 – Finnish War: Sweden loses the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia. 1808 – Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels who rose up on May 2 are executed near Príncipe Pío hill. 1811 – The Anglo-Portuguese army under Lord Wellington tries to halt a larger French army under Marshal Masséna marching to relieve Almeida in the Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro. After intense fighting, the French are repulsed. 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 in Athens, Greece. 1848 – The boar-crested Anglo-Saxon Benty Grange helmet is discovered in a barrow on the Benty Grange farm in Derbyshire. 1849 – The May Uprising in Dresden begins: The last of the German revolutions of 1848–49. 1855 – American adventurer William Walker departs from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Nicaragua.

1901–present 1901 – The Great Fire of 1901 begins in Jacksonville, Florida. 1913 – Raja Harishchandra, the first full-length Indian feature film, is released, marking the beginning of the Indian film industry. 1920 – A Bolshevik coup fails in the Democratic Republic of Georgia. 1921 – Ireland is partitioned under British law by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, creating Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. 1921 – West Virginia becomes the first state to legislate a broad sales tax, but does not implement it until a number of years later due to enforcement issues. 1928 – The Jinan incident begins with the deaths of twelve Japanese civilians by Chinese forces in Jinan, China, which leads to Japanese retaliation and the deaths of over 2,000 Chinese civilians in the following days. 1939 – The All India Forward Bloc is formed by Netaji Subhas 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, resulting in more than 7,000 deaths. 1947 – New post-war Japanese constitution goes into effect. 1948 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Shelley v. Kraemer that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable. 1951 – London's Royal Festival Hall opens with the Festival of Britain. 1951 – The United States Senate Committee on Armed Services and United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations begin their closed door hearings into the relief of Douglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman. 1952 – Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict of the United States land a plane at the North Pole. 1952 – The Kentucky Derby is televised nationally for the first time, on the CBS network. 1953 – Two men are rescued from a semitrailer that crashed over the side of the Pit River Bridge before it fell into the Sacramento River. Amateur photographer Virginia Schau photographs "Rescue on Pit River Bridge", the first and only winning submission for the Pulitzer Prize for Photography to have been taken by a woman. 1957 – Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. 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 new-found attention to the civil rights movement. 1968 – Eighty-five people are killed when Braniff International Airways Flight 352 crashes near Dawson, Texas. 1971 – Erich Honecker becomes First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, remaining in power until 1989. 1978 – The first unsolicited bulk commercial email (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 – The Conservative Party wins the United Kingdom general election. The following day, Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female British Prime Minister. 1986 – Twenty-one people are killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb explodes on Air Lanka Flight 512 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 the restrictor plate for the following season both at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega. 1999 – The southwestern portion of Oklahoma City is devastated by an F5 tornado, killing forty-five people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. The tornado is one of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak. This tornado also produces the highest wind speed ever recorded, measured at . In meteorology, the term "May 3" is synonymous with the F5 tornado. 1999 – Infiltration of Pakistani soldiers on Indian side results in the Kargil War. 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. 2006 – Armavia Flight 967 crashes into the Black Sea near Sochi International Airport in Sochi, Russia, killing 113 people. 2007 – The three-year-old British girl Madeleine McCann disappears in Praia da Luz, Portugal, starting "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history". 2015 – Two gunmen launch 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 are evacuated from their homes in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada as a wildfire rips through the community, destroying approximately 2,400 homes and buildings. 2021 – Twenty-six people are killed and ninety-eight are injured after an elevated section of the Mexico City Metro collapses. 2023 – Nine students and a security guard are killed in the Belgrade school shooting, the first attack of its kind in Serbia. 2023 - Ethnic violence breaks out between the Meitei and the Kuki Zo people in the state of Manipur.

Births Pre-1600 490 – Kʼan Joy Chitam I, ruler of Palenque (died 565) 612 – Constantine III, Byzantine emperor (died 641) 1238 – Emilia Bicchieri, Italian saint (died 1314) 1276 – Louis, Count of Évreux, son of King Philip III of France (died 1319) 1415 – Cecily Neville, Duchess of York (died 1495) 1428 – Pedro González de Mendoza, Spanish cardinal (died 1495) 1446 – Margaret of York (died 1503) 1461 – Raffaele Riario, Italian cardinal (died 1521) 1469 – Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and philosopher (died 1527) 1479 – Henry V, Duke of Mecklenburg (died 1552) 1481 – Juana de la Cruz Vázquez Gutiérrez, Spanish abbess of the Franciscan Third Order Regular (died 1534) 1536 – Stephan Praetorius, German theologian (died 1603)

1601–1900 1632 – Catherine of St. Augustine, French-Canadian nurse and candidate for sainthood, founded the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec (died 1668) 1662 – Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann, German architect, designed the Pillnitz Castle (died 1736) 1678 – Amaro Pargo, Spanish corsair (died 1747) 1695 – Henri Pitot, French physicist and engineer, invented the Pitot tube (died 1771) 1729 – Florian Leopold Gassmann, Czech composer (died 1774) 1761 – August von Kotzebue, German playwright and author (died 1819) 1764 – Princess Élisabeth of France (died 1794) 1768 – Charles Tennant, Scottish chemist and businessman (died 1838) 1783 – José de la Riva Agüero, Peruvian soldier and politician, 1st President of Peru and 2nd President of North Peru (died 1858) 1814 – Adams George Archibald, Canadian lawyer and politician, 4th Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia (died 1892) 1826 – Charles XV of Sweden (died 1872) 1844 – Richard D'Oyly Carte, English talent agent and composer (died 1901) 1849 – Jacob Riis, Danish-American journalist and photographer (died 1914) 1849 – Bernhard von Bülow, German soldier and politician, Chancellor of Germany (died 1929) 1850 – Johnny Ringo US criminal and gunfighter (died 1882) 1854 – George Gore, American baseball player and manager (died 1933) 1859 – August Herrmann, American executive in Major League Baseball (died 1931) 1860 – Vito Volterra, Italian mathematician and physicist (died 1940) 1860 – John Scott Haldane, British physiologist and researcher (died 1936) 1867 – Andy Bowen, American boxer (died 1894) 1867 – J. T. Hearne, English cricketer (died 1944) 1870 – Princess Helena Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein (died 1948) 1871 – Emmett Dalton, American criminal (died 1937) 1873 – Pavlo Skoropadskyi, German-Ukrainian general and politician, Hetman of Ukraine (died 1945) 1874 – François Coty, French businessman and publisher, founded Coty (died 1934) 1874 – Vagn Walfrid Ekman, Swedish oceanographer and academic (died 1954) 1877 – Karl Abraham, German psychoanalyst and author (died 1925) 1879 – Fergus McMaster, Australian businessman and soldier, co-founded Qantas (died 1950) 1886 – Marcel Dupré, French organist and composer (died 1971) 1887 – Marika Kotopouli, Greek actress (died 1954) 1889 – Beulah Bondi, American actress (died 1981) 1889 – Gottfried Fuchs, German-Canadian Olympic soccer player (died 1972) 1891 – Tadeusz Peiper, Polish poet and critic (died 1969) 1891 – Eppa Rixey, American baseball pitcher (died 1963) 1892 – George Paget Thomson, English physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1975) 1892 – Jacob Viner, Canadian-American economist and academic (died 1970) 1893 – Konstantine Gamsakhurdia, Georgian author (died 1975) 1895 – Cornelius Van Til, Dutch philosopher, theologian, and apologist (died 1987) 1896 – Karl Allmenröder, German soldier and pilot (died 1917) 1896 – V. K. Krishna Menon, Indian lawyer, jurist, and politician, Indian Minister of Defence (died 1974) 1896 – Dodie Smith, English author and playwright (died 1990) 1897 – William Joseph Browne, Canadian lawyer and politician, 20th Solicitor General of Canada (died 1989) 1898 – Septima Poinsette Clark, American educator and activist (died 1987) 1898 – Golda Meir, Ukrainian-Israeli educator and politician, 4th Prime Minister of Israel (died 1978)

1901–present 1902 – Alfred Kastler, German-French physicist and poet, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1984) 1903 – Bing Crosby, American singer and actor (died 1977) 1905 – Red Ruffing, American baseball pitcher and coach (died 1986) 1906 – Mary Astor, American actress (died 1987)