On This Day: 3 May

An estimated 30,000 lives are lost when the Greek island of Rhodes is struck by the largest of three earthquakes in less than two months		1481
Columbus discovers Jamaica		1494
Pedro Alvares Cabral lands in Brazil		1500
The fifth Lateran Council begins		1512
Henry Garnet, Jesuit priest, is hanged for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot		1606
Francis Bacon, Lord Chancellor, is charged with accepting bribes to grant monopoly patents and impeached		1621
America's first toll bridge comes into operation in Massachusetts		1654
A total solar eclipse is observed across northern Europe and northern Asia, as predicted by Edmond Halley to within 4 minutes accuracy		1715
British fleet defeats the French at the First Battle of Cape Finisterre		1747
British troops defeat the American colonists at the Battle of Briar Creek		1779
Star and Evening Advertiser – first daily evening newspaper – first issued (London)		1788
Port Louis, Tobago, destroyed by fire		1790
Poland's first liberal constitution accepted by the Diet		1791
Washington, DC, is incorporated as a city after Congress abolishes the Board of Commissioners, the District's founding government		1802
The rebels who rose up in Madrid on the previous day are executed near Príncipe Pío hill – as commemorated by Goya in The Third of May 1808 (a companion to The Second of May 1808)		1808
The first duel fought from hot air balloons takes place over Paris – one contestant shot dead		1808
Lord Byron swims the Dardanelles, taking 80 minutes		1810
Louis XVIII enters Paris and takes the throne, after the defeat of Napoleon		1814
The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway – the first steam–hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel – is opened		1830
New Zealand proclaimed a British colony		1841
An Anglo–Saxon helmet, with a crest representing a boar, is discovered in a barrow on Benty Grange farm in Derbyshire		1848
The May Uprising – the last of the German revolutions of 1848–49 – begins in Dresden		1849
Charles XV is crowned King of Sweden		1860
The Hudson's Bay Company gives up all claims to Vancouver Island		1867
The first US destroyers arrive in Britain to fight against Germany		1917
The Government of Ireland Act 1920 is passed, dividing Ireland into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland (the latter was superseded by the Irish Free State on 2 December 1922)		1921
First London production of Show Boat		1928
Margaret Mitchell wins the Pulitzer Prize for Gone with the Wind		1937
Stalin appoints his right–hand man Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov as foreign minister		1939
British forces under Lord Mountbatten capture Rangoon from the Japanese		1945
Japan's new post–war constitution comes into effect		1947
Festival of Britain opened by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth		1951
US Lt–Cols Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict land a plane at the North Pole		1952
The Kentucky Derby is televised nationally for the first time, on the CBS network		1952
A new range of mountains is discovered in the Antarctic, with two peaks over 13,000 feet		1956
Walter O'Malley, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles		1957
The Anne Frank House museum opens in Amsterdam		1960
Frederick West becomes Britain's first human heart transplant recipient at the National Heart Hospital, London		1968
Jimi Hendrix arrested at Toronto airport for possession of narcotics		1969
Erich Honecker becomes head of state in East Germany, remaining in power until 1989		1971
The 108–story Sears Tower in Chicago is topped out at 1,451 feet as the world's tallest building		1973
Digital Equipment Corporation sends the first 'spam' email to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the USA		1978
30 people die of legionnaire's disease in Stafford		1985
At the peak of a week–long tornado outbreak, an F5 tornado kills 45 people, injures 665, and causes $1 billion in damage, in Oklahoma City; it produces the highest wind speed ever recorded – approx. 300 mph		1999
US expedition announces that it has found the body of George Mallory on Everest		1999
Stephen Hendry wins his seventh world professional snooker championship – a modern record		1999
Trial of the two Libyans accused of planting the bomb on Pan–Am flight 103 in 1988 begins in Camp Zeist, Holland		2000
Madeleine McCann disappears from a holiday apartment in Praia Da Luz, Portugal – a few days before her fourth birthday		2007
Cyclone Nargis kills about 146,000 people in Burma		2008
A wildfire rips through Fort McMurray, Alberta, destroying approx. 2,400 homes and other buildings and causing 88,000 people to be evacuated		2016

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On This Day: 3 May