On December 3rd...

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1368 King Charles VI of France was born.

1447 Bayezid II, Ottoman Sultan, was born.

1586 Sir Thomas Herriot introduced potatoes to England.

1755 Painter Gilbert Stuart was born.

1775 The first official U.S. flag (Grand Union Flag) was raised, aboard the USS Alfred.

1793 Abotionist Lucretia Coffin Mott was born.

1795 Rowland Hill, developer of the world's first postage stamps, was born.

1818 Illinois became the 21st state.

1826 George B. McClellan, American Civil War general, was born.

1833 Oberlin College opened.

1834 The first dental society in the United States was organized.

1835 The first U.S. mutual fire insurance company issued its first policy, in Rhode Island.

1847 Frederick Douglass published the first issue of his newspaper North Star.

1857 Novelist Joseph Conrad was born.

1871 Politician Newton D. Baker was born.

1881 Henry Morton Stanley founded Leopoldville (now Kinshasa), Congo.

1894 Novelist Robert Louis Stevenson died.

1905 John Bartlett, compiler of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, died.

1910 Neon lights were publicly displayed for the first time, at the Paris Auto Show.
1910 Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, died.

1917 The Quebec Bridge opened to traffic.

1919 Painter Auguste Renoir died.

1925 South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung was born.
1925 Singer Ferlin Husky was born.

1926 Detective novelist Agatha Christie* went missing.

1927 Singer Andy Williams was born.

1930 Airborne chemicals combined with fog to kill 60 persons in the Meuse Valley of Belgium.

1931 Alka Seltzer was introduced to the public.

1937 Auto racer Bobby Allison was born.

1948 Rock musician Ozzy Osbourne was born.

1950 Paul Harvey began his national radio program.

1951 Auto racer Rick Mears was born.

1957 Newspaper and magazine publisher Frank Gannett died.

1960 Actress Daryl Hannah was born.

1964 Police arrested 800 sit-in students at the University of California at Berkeley.

1967 The first human heart transplant was performed by South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard.

1973 Pioneer 10 made its closest encounter with Jupiter.

1979 Eleven persons were trampled to death at a Who concert in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1980 Actress Anna Chlumsky was born.

1984 A chemical leak at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, killed at least 2,259 persons.

1992 The Greek oil tanker Aegean Sea ran aground in a storm while approaching La Coruña, Spain, and spilled much of its 80,000-ton cargo.

1995 Author Robertson Davies died.

1996 Babrak Karmal, President of Afghanistan, died.

1999 A fire at a cold storage warehouse in Worcester, Massachusetts, claimed the lives of 6 firefighters.
1999 Actress Madeline Kahn died.

2000 Poet Gwendolyn Brooks died.

2007 A winter storm caused the Chehalis River to flood much of Lewis County, Washington, closed part of Interstate 5, and caused at least 8 deaths.

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This page was last updated on December 02, 2017.