may 3

May 3 is the 123rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (124th in leap years). There are 242 days remaining.

Events

1400-1899

1494 - Christopher Columbus discovers Jamaica.
1791 - The May Constitution of Poland (first modern constitution in Europe) is proclaimed by the Polish Diet.
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 Prncipe Po hill.
1810 - Lord Byron swims the Hellespont.
1860 - Charles XV of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Sweden.
1867 - The Hudson's Bay Company gives up all claims to Vancouver Island.

1900-1999

1912 - The first victims of the RMS Titanic are buried in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
1933 - Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first women to head the United States Mint.
1937 - Gone With the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
1945 - World War II: Sinking of the floating-jails Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland by the RAF in the Lbeck Bay.
1946 - World War II: The International Military Tribunal for the Far East begins in Tokyo against 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
1947 - New post-war Japanese constitution goes into effect.
1951 - London's Royal Festival Hall 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 S. Truman.
1952 - U.S. lieutenant colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict land a plane at the geographic North Pole.
1956 - The judo World Championships are first held.
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.
1968 - A Braniff International Electra crashes during a storm near Dawson, Texas killing 85.
1971 - All Things Considered, National Public Radio's flagship news program, broadcasts for the first time.
1982- Falklands War: The Type 42 destroyer HMS Sheffield is hit by an Exocet missile.
1986 - In Bergen, Norway, Sandra Kim wins the thirty-first Eurovision Song Contest for Belgium singing "J'aime la vie" (I love life).
1987 - Davey Allison wins his first NASCAR Winston Cup race at the Winston 500 in Talladega, Alabama.
1991 - The Declaration of Windhoek is signed.
1991 - The last episode of the soap opera Dallas aired.
1997 - In Dublin, Ireland, Katrina & the Waves win the forty-second Eurovision Song Contest for the United Kingdom singing "Love Shine a Light".
1999 - Oklahoma City is slammed by an F5 tornado. The tornado was part of a storm system that produces 66 tornadoes. The Oklahoma City tornado kills 38 people and injures 665, and causes $1 billion in damage. (see The Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak)
1999 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 11,000 for the first time in its history at 11,014.70. A little under a year later on January 14, 2000 it closed at its highest level to date at 11,722.98.

2000-2099

2000 - Datapoint, the company that commissioned the Intel 8008 microprocessor, declares Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
2000 - The sport of Geocaching begins with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS are posted on Usenet.
2003 - New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain mysteriously falls from its perch after 10,000 years
2003 - Funny Cide becomes the first New York-bred horse to win the Kentucky Derby.