May 3
1765 The first US medical school, University of Pennsylvania, is founded.
1802 Washington DC is incorporated as a city.
1841 New Zealand is formally proclaimed a British colony.
1845 Fire kills 1,600 in a popular theatre in Canton, China.
1913 The first full-length Indian feature film Raja Harishchandra is released.
1921 West Virginia imposed the first state sales tax.
1936 French People’s Front wins elections.
1947 Japan forms a constitutional democracy.
1960 The musical “The Fantasticks” opens off-Broadway, beginning a record run of nearly 42 years and 17,162 performances.
1962 Express train crashes into wreckage of a commuter train and a freight train, killing 163 people in Tokyo, Japan.
1963 Martin Luther King Jr delivers his landmark speech on civil rights.
1969 Guitar legend Jimi Hendrix is arrested in Toronto for possession of heroin.
1971 Erich Honecker succeeds Walter Ulbricht as East German party leader.
1986 A massive bomb rips apart an Air Lanka Lockheed L-1011 at Colombo airport minutes before takeoff for Maldives, killing 20 passengers.
1999 Mireya Moscoso wins the election as Panama’s first woman President.
2000 Militants kill four Filipino hostages including a priest in the southern Philippines island of Basilan.
2001 US loses its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission was formed in 1947.
2002 A ferry carrying hundreds of people sinks in a storm on the Meghna River, Bangladesh.
2003 James Miller, British freelance journalist, is shot and killed by an Israeli military tank in the Gaza Strip.
2005 Iraq’s first democratically elected government is sworn in.
2006 An Armenian airliner carrying 113 people tumbles into the Black Sea harbour of the Russian resort of Sochi.
2007 Sudan and Chad sign a Saudi-brokered reconciliation deal, requiring both sides to cooperate with the UN to stabilise Darfur.
2008 Cyclone Nargis strikes Myanmar, killing at least 78,000 and leaving 56,000 others missing.
2013 Chaudhry Zulfikar Ali, special prosecutor in the Benazir Bhutto murder case, is shot dead in Islamabad.
HIGHLIGHT
1991
Nasser wins Gulf News 4WD Rally title
Qatar’s Nasser Saleh Al Attiya became the first Gulf News 4WD Rally champion after an exhausting surge across some of the UAE’s most demanding desert terrain. Partnered by Abdullah Al Marri in a red, white and blue Nissan Patrol, the 20-year-old student from Doha won the inaugural event by the wide margin of 19 minutes after most of the other leading contenders had been claimed as casualties by a rugged 900-km route. Wiping away the dust and trying to forget his weariness at the finish at the Gulf News offices, champion Nasser Saleh said: “I’m tired, but very happy. I came to Dubai hoping to finish in the top three, and this is the first time that I have won a 24-hour rally. It was very difficult.” He then received the gleaming Gulf News 4WD Rally trophy from Obaid Humaid Al Tayer, Editor-in-Chief and Managing Director of Gulf News and Colonel Saeed Khalfan, chairman of Al Nasr Motor Club.
