May 3, 1715
A total solar eclipse occurs, as predicted by
Edmund Halley to within 4 minutes accuracy.
1802
Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city.
1915
The poem
In Flanders Fields is written by
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.
1937
Gone With The Wind wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
1952
The
Kentucky Derby is televised nationally for the first time.
1973
The 108-story
Sears Tower, in Chicago, is topped out at 1,451 feet as the world's tallest building.
1978
The first
spam email is sent .
1987
Bobby Allison crashes at Talladega Superspeedway, leading NASCAR to develop
restrictor plates for the Daytona, and Talledega races the next year.
1999
An F5 tornado strikes southwest Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, producing a wind speed of 301 mph (+/- 20 mph), the highest wind speed ever recorded.
It is one of 66 tornadoes that day.
2000
Geocaching becomes a thing.
2003
New Hampshire's famous
Old Man of the Mountain collapses.
Births
1849 Jacob Riis; 1874 Franηois Coty; 1879 Fergus McMaster; 1903 Bing Crosby; 1906 Mary Astor; 1917 Betty Comden; 1919 Pete Seeger; 1921 Sugar Ray Robinson; 1928 Dave Dudley; 1932 Robert Osborne; 1933 James Brown, Brother Stair; 1934 Frankie Valli; 1935 Ron Popeil; 1944 Pete Staples; 1947 Doug Henning; 1951 Christopher Cross; 1953 Bruce Hall; 1975 Willie Geist; 1975 Christina Hendricks; 1981 J. Tillman
Deaths
1972 Bruce Cabot; 1986 Robert Alda; 1996 Jack Weston; 2006 Earl Woods; 2007 Wally Schirra; 2011 Jackie Cooper