Behind History For December 3 – Today in History

Behind History For December 3

1904 – The Jovian moon (moons of jupiter) Himalia (largest irregular satellite of Jupiter) is discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine at California’s Lick Observatory.

1910 – Modern neon (consists of brightly glowing, electrified glass tubes or bulbs) lighting was 1st demonstrated by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show.

1912 – Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia (the Balkan League) sign an armistice with the Ottoman Empire, temporarily stopping the First Balkan War.

1919 – After nearly 20 years of planning and construction, the Quebec Bridge opens to traffic at the cost of 89 lives. This project has failed twice and it almost took 30 years to complete it.

1920 – Following more than a month of Turkish–Armenian War, the Turkish dictated Treaty of Alexandropol (peace treaty between the First Republic of Armenia and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey ending the Turkish-Armenian War).

1927 – Putting Pants on Philip, the first Laurel and Hardy film, is released.

1929 – President Herbert Hoover delivers his first State of the Union message to Congress. It was presented in written not in speech.

1944 – Greek Civil War: Fighting breaks out in Athens between the ELAS (Greek People Liberation’s Army) and government forces supported by the British Army.

1959 – The current flag of Singapore was adopted, 6 months after the freedom from british.

1967 – 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).

1971 – Indo-Pakistani War of 1971: Pakistan launches a pre-emptive strike (Operation Chengiz Khan was the code name assigned by the Pakistani Air Force (PAF) against India and a full-scale war begins claiming hundreds of lives.

1973 – Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 (American Space Probe) sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.

1976 – Bob Marley was attempted to murder by a stranger in Kingston, Jamaica just two days before the “Smile Jamaica”, a free concert.

1979 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini became the 1st Supreme Leader of Iran.

1984 – Bhopal disaster: A methyl isocyanate  gas leak incident on the night of 2–3 December 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), 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.

1989 – The Cold War between NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the Soviet Union may be coming to an end.

1992 – 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.

1994 – The PlayStation developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment was released in Japan.

1994 – Taiwan held the first full local elections; James Soong elected as the first and only direct elected Governor of Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian became the first direct elected Mayor of Taipei, Wu Den-yih became the first directed Mayor of Kaohsiung.

1999 – NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere.

2005 – XCOR Aerospace makes the first manned rocket aircraft delivery of U.S. Mail in Kern County, California.

2007 – 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.

2009 – A suicide bombing at a hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, kills 25 people, including three ministers of the Transitional Federal Government.

2012 – At least 475 people are killed after Typhoon Bopha makes landfall in the Philippines.

2014 – The Japanese space agency, JAXA, launches the space explorer Hayabusa2 from the Tanegashima Space Center on a six-year round trip mission to an asteroid to collect rock samples.