May 3 Historical Events

The following events took place on May 3. The list is arranged in chronological order.

Found 48 events. Showing 31 - 48.

• 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.
• 1957
  Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn, to Los Angeles.
• 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 museum opens in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
• 1960
  The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is established.
• 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 African-American Civil Rights Movement.
• 1973
  The 108-story Sears Tower in Chicago is topped out at 1,451 feet as the world’s tallest building.
• 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
  After the general election, Margaret Thatcher forms her first government as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 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 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 301 +/- 20 mph (484 +/- 32 km/h).
• 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.
• 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.