October 3

1226 – St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order, dies

1739 – Russia signs a treaty with the Turks ending a 3-year conflict between the two countries

1776 – Congress borrows five million dollars to halt the rapid depreciation of paper money in the colonies

1781 – French and American troops team up to cut off British supplies at Gloucester during the Revolutionary War

1800 – Historian known as the “Father of History” George Bancroft is born

1862 – The Union army defeats the Confederates at the Battle of Corinth in Mississippi during the Civil War

1863 – President Abraham Lincoln announces the nation will celebrate an official Thanksgiving holiday on November 26, 1863, and every fourth Thursday of every November thereafter

1873 – Captain Jack and three other Modoc Indians are hanged in Oregon for the murder of General Edward Canby

1876 – John L. Routt is elected the first state governor of Colorado in the Centennial year of the US

1895 – Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage is published in book form

1896 – English poet and designer, William Morris, dies

1900 – American novelist, Thomas Wolfe, is born

1906 – The first conference on wireless telegraphy in Berlin adopts SOS as a warning signal

1916 – Yorkshire veterinarian and author James Herriot is born

1917 – US Congress passes the War Revenue Act, a tax on income to raise money for World War I

1922 – Rebecca L. Felton becomes the first woman US Senator

1925 – Writer and screenwriter, Gore Vidal, is born

1929 – The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes officially changes its name to Yugoslavia

1931 – The comic strip, Dick Tracy, first appears in the New York News

1931 – Danish violinist, composer, and conductor, Carl Nielsen, dies

1932 – Britain terminates its mandate over Iraq, making it independent after 17 years of British rule and centuries of Ottoman rule

1935 – US Air Force retired brigadier general and youngest astronaut to walk on the moon, Charles “Charlie” Duke, is born

1938 – Rock ‘n’ roll pioneer, Eddie Cochran, is born

1940 – US Army adopts airborne, or parachute soldiers who will later be used in World War II for landing troops into combat and infiltrating agents into enemy territory

1941 – The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart as detective Sam Spade opens

1941 – Singer and songwriter, Chubby Checker, aka Ernest Evans, is born

1942 – Germany conducts the first successful test flight of a V-2 missile, which flies perfectly over a 118-mile course during World War II

1944 – German troops evacuate Athens, Greece during World War II

1951 – New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson hits a home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers to win the National League pennant

1952 – The UK successfully develops a nuclear weapon, the A-bomb, becoming the world’s third nuclear power

1954 – Black minister, civil rights activist, and television host, Al Sharpton, is born

1954 – American singer, songwriter, producer, and guitarist, Stevie Ray Vaughan, is born

1955 – Captain Kangaroo and The Mickey Mouse Club premier on television

1961 – The United Auto Workers union goes on strike at Ford plants across the country demanding higher wages and better benefits

1964 – Oscar and Academy Award-winning actor, Clive Owen, is born

1967 – Writer, singer, and folk icon, Woody Guthrie, dies

1967 – Operation Wallowa in South Vietnam is launched during the Vietnam War

1968 – 24 US military personnel died when a US Army CH-47 helicopter collides with an American C-7 Caribou transport aircraft at Camp Evans, 11 miles north of Hue during the Vietnam War

1969 – Actress, singer, songwriter, and fashion designer, Gwen Stefani, is born

1974 – Frank Robinson becomes the first black manager in major league baseball

1981 – A hunger strike protesting the loss of special category status treatment in prison by Irish nationalists at the Maze Prison in Belfast in Northern Ireland is called off after seven months and ten deaths, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher agreed to give in to several of the protester’s demands including the right to wear civilian clothing and receive mail and visits

1984 – Actress, singer, and songwriter, Ashlee Simpson, is born

1990 – Less than one year after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, East and West Germany come together in what is known as “Unity Day,” marking what many consider to be the official end of the Cold War

1995 – Former pro football star and actor O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, ending what many called “the Trial of the Century”

2005 – English actor and comedian, Ronnie Barker, dies

2005 – Hurricane Stan hits the Mexican coastline after passing over the Yucatan Peninsula, and caused a series of landslides and torrential rains that killed over 1,000 people. In Guatemala, two entire villages were turned into mass graves. Hurricane Stan also caused floods in San Salvador, El Salvador, that killed more than 70 people. There were scattered casualties from the storm in Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica and Mexico. Overall, more than 2,000 bodies were recovered across the region. Approximately 3,000 were never found

2008 – The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 authorizes the secretary of the Treasury to purchase distressed assets of financial corporations and supply cash directly to banks to keep them afloat

2011 – An Italian appeals court overturns the murder conviction of Amanda Knox, an American exchange student who two years earlier, along with her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, were found guilty in the 2007 stabbing murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. The case received national attention as the tabloids dubbed attractive Knox, “Foxy Knoxy” and “Angel Face,” and known in Italy as a party-girl who killed Kercher in a sex game gone wrong, while at home she was portrayed to be a hard-working exchange student who was being taken advantage of by an over-zealous prosecutor. In 2013, Knox and her former boyfriend, Sollecito, were re-tried and convicted. Knox will not likely return to Italy to serve her sentence of 28 ½ years in prison unless extradited