December 3

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December 3 is the 337th day (338th on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 28 days remaining.

Events

1818 - Illinois becomes the 21st U.S. state
1828 - U.S. presidential election, 1828: Challenger Andrew Jackson beats incumbant John Quincy Adams and is elected President of the United States.
1901 - US President Theodore Roosevelt delivers a 20,000-word speach to the United States House of Representatives asking Congress curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits."
1912 - First Balkan War ends - Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia (the Balkan League) sign an armistice with Turkey, ending the two-month long war.
1917 - After nearly 20 years of planning and construction, the Quebec Bridge open to traffic (the bridge partially collapsed on August 29, 1907 and September 11, 1916).
1929 - Great Depression: US President Herbert Hoover announces to the United States Congress that the worst effects of the recent stock market crash are behind the nation and the American people have regained faith in the economy.
1944 - Civil war breaks out in a newly-liberated Greece, between Communists and royalists.
1947 - Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire opens on Broadway.
1964 - Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and massive sit-in of administration building (they were protesting the UC Regents decision to forbid Vietnam War protests on UC property).
1967 - At Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky becomes the first human to receive a heart transplant (the transplant team was headed by Christiaan Barnard but Washkansky died 18 days later from double pneumonia).
1967 - The luxury train 20th Century Limited completes its last run from New York City to Chicago, Illinois (the train was first inaugurated on June 15, 1902).
1970 - October Crisis: In Montreal, Quebec, kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Cross is released by the [[Front de Lib�ration du Quebec]] terrorist group after being held hostage for 60 days. Police nogotiated his release and in return the Government of Canada grants five of the terrorists of the Chenier Cell of the [[Front de Lib�ration du Quebec]] their request for safe passage to Cuba.
1973 - Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 send back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
1976 - Patrick Hillery becomes the sixth President of Ireland.
1979 - In Cincinnati, Ohio, a stampede for seats at Riverfront Coliseum during a Who concert kills eleven fans (band members were not made aware of the deaths until after the show).
1982 - A soil sample is taken from Times Beach, Missouri that would be found to contain 300 times the safe level of dioxin.
1984 - Bhopal Tragedy: Methyl isocyanate from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, cental India, kills more than 2000 people outright and injures 150,000-600,000 in one of the worst industrial disasters in history (at least 6,000 died later from their injuries).
1989 - Cold War: In a meeting off the coast of Malta, US President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev release statements indicating that the cold war between their nations may be coming to an end (some commetators from both nations exgagerated the wording and independently declared the Cold War over).
1990 - At Detroit Metropolitan Airport, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9 carrying Northwest Airlines Flight 1482 collides with a Boeing 727 carrying Northwest Airlines Flight 299 on the runway, killing 8 passengers and 4 crewmembers aboard flight 1482.
1992 - UN Security Council Resolution 794 is unanimously passed, approving a coalition of United Nations peacekeepers led by the United States to form UNITAF, tasked with ensuring humanitarian aid gets distributed and establishing peace in Somalia.
1992 - The Greek oil tanker Aegean Sea carrying 80,000 tonnes of crude oil runs aground in a storm while on approach to La Coruna, Spain and spills much of its cargo.
1997 - In Ottawa, Canada, representatives from 121 countries sign a treaty prohibiting manufacture and deployment of anti-personnel land mines. The United States, People's Republic of China and Russia did not sign the treaty, however.
1999 - After rowing for 81 days and 2,962 miles, Tori Murden becomes the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean by rowboat alone when she reaches Guadeloupe in the Canary Islands.
1999 - NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft entered the Martain atmosphere.