Today In History – This Day In History Funny Events

Pope John X was the bishop of Rome and nominal ruler of the Papal States from March 914 to his death. A candidate of the counts of Tusculum, he attempted to unify Italy under the leadership of Berengar of Friuli, and was instrumental in the defeat of the Saracens at the Battle of Garigliano. He eventually fell out with Marozia, who had him deposed, imprisoned, and finally murdered. John’s pontificate occurred during the period known as the Saeculum obscurum.

Pope John X crowned Berengar I of Italy as Holy Roman Emperor.

The War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802) was the second war between revolutionary France and a coalition of European monarchies, led by Britain, Austria and Russia, and including the Ottoman Empire, Portugal, Naples and various German monarchies. Prussia did not join the coalition, while Spain supported France.

War of the Second Coalition: Battle of Wiesloch: Austrian Lieutenant Field Marshal Anton Sztáray defeats the French at Wiesloch.

The Battle of Hohenlinden was fought on 3 December 1800 during the French Revolutionary Wars. A French army under Jean Victor Marie Moreau won a decisive victory over an Austrian and Bavarian force led by 18-year-old Archduke John of Austria. The allies were forced into a disastrous retreat that compelled them to request an armistice, effectively ending the War of the Second Coalition. Hohenlinden is 33 km (21 mi) east of Munich in modern Germany.

War of the Second Coalition: Battle of Hohenlinden: French General Moreau decisively defeats the Archduke John of Austria near Munich. Coupled with First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte's earlier victory at Marengo, this will force the Austrians to sign an armistice and end the war.

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-most land area. Its capital city is Springfield in the center of the state, and the state's largest city is Chicago in the northeast.

Illinois becomes the 21st U.S. state.

The Zollverein, or German Customs Union, was a coalition of German states formed to manage tariffs and economic policies within their territories. Organized by the 1833 Zollverein treaties, it formally started on 1 January 1834. However, its foundations had been in development from 1818 with the creation of a variety of custom unions among the German states. By 1866, the Zollverein included most of the German states. The Zollverein was not part of the German Confederation (1815-1866).

The Zollverein (German Customs Union) begins the first regular census in Germany.

The Battle of the Eureka Stockade was fought in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, on 3 December 1854, between gold miners and the colonial forces of Australia. It was the culmination of the 1851–1854 Eureka Rebellion during the Victorian gold rush. The fighting resulted in at least 27 deaths and many injuries, the majority of casualties being rebels. The miners had various grievances, chiefly the cost of mining permits and the officious way the system was enforced.

Battle of the Eureka Stockade: More than 20 gold miners at Ballarat, Victoria, are killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences.

The Duquesne Country and Athletic Club was a professional football team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1895 until 1900. The team was considered one of the best, if not the best, professional football teams in the country from 1898 until 1900. However, the team is most famous for being the first football franchise to be owned by an individual, William Chase Temple.

The Duquesne Country and Athletic Club defeated an all-star collection of early football players 16-0, in what is considered to be the very first all-star game for professional American football.

The 1901 State of the Union Address was given on Tuesday, December 3, 1901, by the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. It was presented to both houses of the 57th United States Congress, but he was not present. He stated, "The Congress assembles this year under the shadow of a great calamity. On the sixth of September, President McKinley was shot by an anarchist while attending the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, and died in that city on the fourteenth of that month." He concluded it with, "Indeed, from every quarter of the civilized world we received, at the time of the President's death, assurances of such grief and regard as to touch the hearts of our people. In the midst of our affliction we reverently thank the Almighty that we are at peace with the nations of mankind; and we firmly intend that our policy shall be such as to continue unbroken these international relations of mutual respect and good will."

In a State of the Union message, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt asks Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits".

There are 97 known moons of the planet Jupiter. This number does not include a number of meter-sized moonlets thought to be shed from the inner moons, nor hundreds of possible kilometer-sized outer irregular moons that were only briefly captured by telescopes. All together, Jupiter's moons form a satellite system, colloquially referred to as the Jovian system. The most massive of the moons are the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, all of which were independently discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei and Simon Marius and were the first objects found to orbit a body that was neither Earth nor the Sun. Much more recently, beginning in 1892, dozens of far smaller Jovian moons have been detected and have received the names of lovers or daughters of the Roman god Jupiter or his Greek equivalent Zeus. The Galilean moons are by far the largest and most massive objects to orbit Jupiter, with the remaining 93 known moons and the rings together comprising just 0.003% of the total orbiting mass.

The Jovian moon Himalia is discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine at California's Lick Observatory.

Neon lighting consists of brightly glowing, electrified glass tubes or bulbs that contain rarefied neon or other gases. Neon lights are a type of cold cathode gas-discharge light. A neon tube is a sealed glass tube with a metal electrode at each end, filled with one of a number of gases at low pressure. A high potential of several thousand volts applied to the electrodes ionizes the gas in the tube, causing it to emit colored light. The color of the light depends on the gas in the tube. Neon lights were named for neon, a noble gas which gives off a popular orange light, but other gases and chemicals called phosphors are used to produce other colors, such as hydrogen (purple-red), helium, carbon dioxide (white), and mercury (blue). Neon tubes can be fabricated in curving artistic shapes, to form letters or pictures. They are mainly used to make dramatic, multicolored glowing signage for advertising, called neon signs, which were popular from the 1920s to 1960s and again in the 1980s.

Modern neon lighting is first demonstrated by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show.

Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey to the south, Serbia and North Macedonia to the west, and Romania to the north. It covers a territory of 110,994 square kilometres (42,855 sq mi) and is the tenth largest within the European Union and the sixteenth-largest country in Europe by area. Sofia is the nation's capital and largest city; other major cities include Burgas, Plovdiv, and Varna.

Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia (the Balkan League) sign an armistice with the Ottoman Empire, temporarily halting the First Balkan War. (The armistice will expire on February 3, 1913, and hostilities will resume.)

The Quebec Bridge is a road, rail, and pedestrian bridge across the lower Saint Lawrence River between Sainte-Foy and Lévis, in Quebec, Canada. The project failed twice during its construction, in 1907 and 1916, at the cost of 88 lives and additional people injured. The bridge eventually opened in 1919.

After nearly 20 years of planning and construction, including two collapses causing 89 deaths, the Quebec Bridge opens to traffic.

In September 1920, remnants of the Ottoman Army's XV Corps under the command of Kâzım Karabekir attacked the First Republic of Armenia, specifically in the Kars. Karabekir had orders from the Ankara Government to "eliminate Armenia physically and politically". One estimate places the number of Armenians massacred by the Turkish army during the invasion at 100,000—this is evident in the marked decline (−25.1%) of the population of modern-day Armenia from 961,677 in 1919 to 720,000 in 1920. The Turkish military victory was followed by the Red Army invasion of Armenia and the establishment of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Turkish invasion and occupation had drastic humanitarian impacts to Armenia's population, triggering condemnation from German and USA officials. According to several historians, only Soviet intervention prevented the completion of the Armenian genocide.

Following more than a month of Turkish-Armenian War, the Turkish dictated Treaty of Alexandropol is concluded.

Putting Pants On Philip is a silent short film starring British/American comedy duo Laurel and Hardy. Made in 1927, Wes D. Gehring identifies this as their first "official" film together as a team.

Putting Pants on Philip, the first Laurel and Hardy film, is released.

The Greek Civil War took place from 1946 to 1949. The conflict, which erupted shortly after the end of World War II, consisted of a Communist-led uprising against the established government of the Kingdom of Greece. The rebels declared a people's republic, the Provisional Democratic Government of Greece, which was governed by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and its military branch, the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE). The rebels were supported by Albania and Yugoslavia. With the support of the United Kingdom and the United States, the Greek government forces ultimately prevailed.

Greek Civil War: Fighting breaks out in Athens between the ELAS and government forces supported by the British Army.

The flag of Singapore was adopted in 1959, the year Singapore became self-governing within the British Empire. Designed by a government committee led by deputy prime minister Toh Chin Chye, it remained as the national flag upon the country's independence from Malaysia on 9 August 1965. The design is a horizontal bicolour of red above white, overlaid in the canton by a white crescent moon facing a pentagon of five small white five-pointed stars. The elements of the flag denote a young nation on the ascendant, universal brotherhood and equality, and national ideals.

The current flag of Singapore is adopted, six months after Singapore became self-governing within the British Empire.

Camelot is a musical with music by Frederick Loewe and lyrics and a book by Alan Jay Lerner. It is based on the legend of King Arthur as adapted from the 1958 novel The Once and Future King by T. H. White.

The musical Camelot debuts at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway. It will become associated with the Kennedy administration.

The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a massive, long-lasting student protest which took place during the 1964–65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The Movement was informally under the central leadership of Berkeley graduate student Mario Savio. Other student leaders include Jack Weinberg, Tom Miller, Michael Rossman, George Barton, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Michael Teal, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg and others.

Free Speech Movement: Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest of the UC Regents' decision to forbid protests on UC property.

Groote Schuur Hospital is a public teaching hospital situated on the slopes of Devil's Peak in the city of Cape Town, South Africa. It was founded in 1938 and is famous for being the institution where the first human-to-human heart transplant took place on the 3rd December 1967, conducted by surgeon Christiaan Barnard on the patient Louis Washkansky.

At Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, a transplant team headed by Christiaan Barnard carries out the first heart transplant on a human (53-year-old Louis Washkansky).

The Indo-Pakistani war of 1971, also known as the third Indo-Pakistani war, was a military confrontation between India and Pakistan that occurred during the Bangladesh Liberation War in East Pakistan from 3 December 1971 until the Pakistani capitulation in Dhaka on 16 December 1971. The war began with Pakistan's Operation Chengiz Khan, consisting of preemptive aerial strikes on eight Indian air stations. The strikes led to India declaring war on Pakistan, marking their entry into the war for East Pakistan's independence, on the side of Bengali nationalist forces. India's entry expanded the existing conflict with Indian and Pakistani forces engaging on both the eastern and western fronts.

Indo-Pakistani War of 1971: Pakistan launches a pre-emptive strike against India and a full-scale war begins claiming hundreds of lives.

The Pioneer programs were two series of United States lunar and planetary space probes. The first program, which ran from 1958 to 1960, unsuccessfully attempted to send spacecraft to orbit the Moon, successfully sent one spacecraft to fly by the Moon, and successfully sent one spacecraft to investigate interplanetary space between the orbits of Earth and Venus. The second program, which ran from 1965 to 1992, sent four spacecraft to measure interplanetary space weather, two to explore Jupiter and Saturn, and two to explore Venus. The two outer planet probes, Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, became the first two of five artificial objects to achieve the escape velocity that will allow them to leave the Solar System, and carried a golden plaque each depicting a man and a woman and information about the origin and the creators of the probes, in case any extraterrestrials find them someday.

Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.

Robert Nesta Marley was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, he fused elements of reggae, ska, and rocksteady, and was renowned for his distinctive vocal and songwriting style. Marley increased the visibility of Jamaican music worldwide and became a global figure in popular culture. He became known as a Rastafarian icon, and he infused his music with a sense of spirituality. Marley is also considered a global symbol of Jamaican music, culture and identity and was controversial in his outspoken support for democratic social reforms. Marley also supported the legalisation of cannabis and advocated for pan-Africanism.

An assassination attempt is made on Bob Marley. He is shot twice, and plays a concert two days later.

Cincinnati, colloquially nicknamed Cincy, is the largest city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Settled in 1788, the city is located on the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line with Kentucky. The third-most populous city in Ohio with a population of 309,317 at the 2020 census, Cincinnati serves as the economic and cultural hub of the tri-state Cincinnati metropolitan area, Ohio's most populous metropolitan area and the nation's 30th-largest at over 2.3 million residents.

In Cincinnati, 11 fans are suffocated in a crush for seats on the concourse outside Riverfront Coliseum before a Who concert.

Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was an Iranian cleric, politician, political theorist, and revolutionary who founded the Islamic Republic of Iran and served as its first supreme leader from 1979 until his death in 1989. He was the main leader of the Iranian Revolution, which overthrew Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and transformed Iran into a theocratic Islamic republic.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini becomes the first Supreme Leader of Iran.

Times Beach is a ghost town in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States, 17 miles (27 km) southwest of St. Louis and 2 miles (3 km) east of Eureka. Once home to more than two thousand people, the town was completely evacuated in early 1983 due to TCDD contamination, formerly the largest civilian exposure to the compound in the history of the United States.

A soil sample is taken from Times Beach, Missouri, that will be found to contain 300 times the safe level of dioxin.

On 3 December 1984, over 500,000 people in the vicinity of the Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India were exposed to the highly toxic gas methyl isocyanate, in what is considered the world's worst industrial disaster. A government affidavit in 2006 stated that the leak caused approximately 558,125 injuries, including 38,478 temporary partial injuries and 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries. Estimates vary on the death toll, with the official number of immediate deaths being 2,259. Others estimate that 8,000 died within two weeks of the incident occurring, and another 8,000 or more died from gas-related diseases. In 2008, the Government of Madhya Pradesh paid compensation to the family members of victims killed in the gas release, and to the injured victims.

Bhopal disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills more than 3,800 people outright and injures 150,000-600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.

The Cold War was a period of global geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, and sports diplomacy.

Cold War: In a meeting off the coast of Malta, U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev release statements indicating that the Cold War between NATO and the Soviet Union may be coming to an end.

An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a ship designed for the bulk transport of oil or its products. There are two basic types of oil tankers: crude tankers and product tankers. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined crude oil from its point of extraction to refineries. Product tankers, generally much smaller, are designed to move refined products from refineries to points near consuming markets.

The Greek oil tanker Aegean Sea, carrying 80,000 tonnes of crude oil, runs aground in a storm while approaching A Coruña, Spain, and spills much of its cargo.

Sema Group plc was an Anglo-French IT services company. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It was acquired by Schlumberger in 2001.

A test engineer for Sema Group uses a personal computer to send the world's first text message via the Vodafone network to the phone of a colleague.

The PlayStation is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was released in Japan on 3 December 1994, followed by North America on 9 September 1995, Europe on 29 September 1995, and other regions following thereafter. As a fifth-generation console, the PlayStation primarily competed with the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn.

The PlayStation was released in Japan

Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core of the Ottawa–Gatineau census metropolitan area (CMA) and the National Capital Region (NCR). As of 2021, Ottawa had a city population of 1,017,449 and a metropolitan population of 1,488,307, making it the fourth-largest city and fourth-largest metropolitan area in Canada.

In Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, representatives from 121 countries sign the Ottawa Treaty prohibiting manufacture and deployment of anti-personnel landmines. The United States, People's Republic of China, and Russia do not sign the treaty, however.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program and for research in aeronautics and space exploration. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., NASA operates ten field centers across the United States and is organized into mission directorates for Science, Space Operations, Exploration Systems Development, Space Technology, Aeronautics Research, and Mission Support. Established in 1958, NASA succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to give the American space development effort a distinct civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science. It has since led most of America's space exploration programs, including Project Mercury, Project Gemini, the 1968–1972 Apollo program missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle.

NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere.

XCOR Aerospace was an American private spaceflight and rocket engine development company based at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, Midland International Air and Spaceport in Midland, Texas and the Amsterdam area, the Netherlands. XCOR was formed in 1999 by former members of the Rotary Rocket rocket engine development team, and ceased operations in 2017.

XCOR Aerospace makes the first manned rocket aircraft delivery of U.S. Mail in Kern County, California.

The Chehalis River is a river in Washington in the United States. It originates in several forks in southwestern Washington, flows east, then north, then west, in a large curve, before emptying into Grays Harbor, an estuary of the Pacific Ocean. The river is the largest solely contained drainage basin in the state.

Winter storms cause the Chehalis River to flood many cities in Lewis County, Washington, and close a 20-mile portion of Interstate 5 for several days. At least eight deaths and billions of dollars in damages are blamed on the floods.

The 2009 Hotel Shamo bombing was a suicide bombing at the Hotel Shamo in Mogadishu, Somalia, on 3 December 2009. The bombing killed 25 people, including three ministers of the Transitional Federal Government, and injured 60 more, making it the deadliest attack in Somalia since the Beledweyne bombing on 18 June 2009 that claimed more than 30 lives.

A suicide bombing at a hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, kills 25 people, including three ministers of the Transitional Federal Government.

Typhoon Bopha, known in the Philippines as Super Typhoon Pablo, was a compact but powerful and catastrophic tropical cyclone that became the strongest on record to ever affect the Philippine island of Mindanao, making landfall as a Category 5 super typhoon with winds of 175 mph (282 km/h). The twenty-fourth tropical storm, along with being the fourth and final super typhoon of the 2012 Pacific typhoon season, Bopha originated unusually close to the equator, becoming the second-most southerly Category 5 super typhoon, reaching a minimum latitude of 7.4°N on December 3, 2012, as only Typhoon Louise of 1964 came closer to the equator at this strength, at 7.3°N. After first making landfall in Palau, where it destroyed houses, disrupted communications and caused power outages, flooding and uprooted trees, Bopha made landfall late on December 3 in Mindanao. The storm caused widespread destruction on Mindanao, leaving thousands of people homeless and killing 1,901 people.

At least 475 people are killed after Typhoon Bopha makes landfall in the Philippines.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is the Japanese national air and space agency. Through the merger of three previously independent organizations, JAXA was formed on 1 October 2003. JAXA is responsible for research, technology development and launch of satellites into orbit, and is involved in many more advanced missions such as asteroid exploration and possible human exploration of the Moon. Its motto is One JAXA and its corporate slogan is Explore to Realize.

The Japanese space agency, JAXA, launches the space explorer Hayabusa 2 from the Tanegashima Space Center on a six-year round trip mission to an asteroid to collect rock samples.