Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 3
This is a list of selected February 3 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
| ← February 2 | February 4 → |
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Images
Use only ONE image at a time
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The Meiji Emperor of Japan -
The Meiji Emperor of Japan -
Landing capsule of Luna 9
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Mossel Bay in 2006 -
border=yes -
Monument to Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper near Clear Lake, Iowa -
Alfredo Stroessner
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Painting of the Battle of San Lorenzo -
James I of Aragon entering Murcia
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| Feast day of Dom Justo Takayama in Japan and the Philippines; | citation check |
| 1488 – Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias landed in Mossel Bay, becoming the first known European to have sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and the southern tip of Africa. | refimprove |
| 1509 – Turkish–Portuguese War: Portugal defeated a joint fleet of Mamlûk Burji Sultanate of Egypt, Ottoman Empire, the Zamorin of Calicut and the Sultan of Gujarat at the Battle of Diu off the coast of Diu, India. | unreferenced section |
| 1807 – Napoleonic Wars: The United Kingdom captured Montevideo, now the capital of Uruguay, from the Spanish Empire. | needs more footnotes; Montevideo not bold because it's not an appropriate target article |
| 1815 – The first factory for the industrial production of cheese opened in Switzerland. | date not in article, refimprove section |
| 1867 – Crown Prince Mutsuhito succeeded his father Kōmei as Emperor of Japan, taking the title Meiji. | needs more footnotes |
| 1913 – The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, allowing Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states or basing it on census results. | refimprove section |
| 1931 – New Zealand's deadliest natural disaster, the 7.9 MW Hawke's Bay earthquake, struck, killing 256. | refimprove section |
| 1966 – The Soviet spacecraft Luna 9 became the first space probe to land on the Moon and transmit pictures from the lunar surface. | refimprove section |
| 1967 – Ronald Ryan became the last person to be legally executed in Australia, sparking public protests across the country. | multiple issues |
| 1984 – A woman under the care of Dr. John Buster of the Harbor–UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, gave birth to a baby that resulted from the first successful embryo transfer from one person to another. | refimprove section |
| 1989 – Alfredo Stroessner', whose rule as President of Paraguay for 35 years was marked by uninterrupted repression in his country, was overthrown in a military coup by Andrés Rodríguez. | Stroessner: refimprove; Rodríguez: unreferenced section |
Eligible
- 1266 – Conquest of Murcia: James I of Aragon entered the Muslim-held city of Murcia after the surrender of its inhabitants three days earlier.
- 1781 – Fourth Anglo-Dutch War: British forces captured the Dutch island of Sint Eustatius after a brief skirmish.
- 1852 – The Argentine Confederation was defeated in the Platine War by an alliance consisting of Brazil, Uruguay and the Argentine provinces of Entre Ríos and Corrientes.
- 1916 – A fire destroyed the Centre Block, the main building of the Canadian parliamentary complex on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Ontario.
- 1918 – At 11,675 feet (3,559 m) long, the Twin Peaks Tunnel opened in San Francisco as the longest streetcar tunnel in the world at the time.
- 1933 – Adolf Hitler announced that the conquest of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe, and its "ruthless Germanisation", were the geopolitical objectives of Reich foreign policy.
- 1953 – Hundreds of native creoles known as forros were massacred on São Tomé Island by the colonial administration and Portuguese landowners.
- 1959 – American rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson were killed when their plane crashed shortly after taking off from Mason City Municipal Airport in Iowa (wreckage pictured).
- 1971 – New York City Police officer Frank Serpico, who had reported police corruption to the department and the press, was shot and wounded under questionable circumstances.
- 1986 – Steve Jobs purchased Pixar from Lucasfilm and launched it as an independent computer animation studio.
- 1998 – A EA-6B Prowler belonging to the United States Marines Corps inadvertently severed a cable supporting a gondola of an aerial tramway in Cavalese, Italy, sending 20 people plummeting to their deaths.
- 1998 – Despite a large international movement advocating the commutation of her sentence to life imprisonment, Karla Faye Tucker became the first woman to be executed in the United States since 1984.
- 2014 – Russia's first school shooting took place when a student opened fire at School No. 263 in Otradnoye District, Moscow, resulting in the deaths of a teacher and a police officer.
- Born/died this day: Coloman, King of Hungary (d. 1116) · Caroline von Wolzogen (b. 1763) · George Crabbe (d. 1832) · Giuseppe Moretti (b. 1857) · Tatyana Velikanova (b. 1932) · C. N. Annadurai (d. 1969)
February 3: Feast day of Saint Laurence of Canterbury (Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism); Four Chaplains' Day in the United States; Setsubun in Japan
- 1813 – Argentine War of Independence: José de San Martín (portrait shown) and his Regiment of Mounted Grenadiers defeated Spanish royalist forces in the Battle of San Lorenzo.
- 1870 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, granting voting rights to citizens regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude".
- 1930 – The Communist Party of Indochina, the Communist Party of Annam and the Communist League of Indochina merged to form the Communist Party of Vietnam.
- 2010 – A cast bronze sculpture, L'Homme qui marche I, by Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, was sold for £65 million (US$103.7 million), setting the record for the most expensive sculpture sold at auction.
Scipione Rebiba (b. 1504) · Isaac Baker Brown (d. 1873) · Dolly Rudeman (b. 1902)