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August 3rd Major News Events

  1. 1981 Air Traffic Controllers Strike
  2. 1914 World War I Declaration of War
  3. 1961 Arms Build Up During Cold War
  4. 1990 Great Britain Heat Wave
  5. 2011 US Debt Bill Signed Into Law

Find More Details for What happened 3rd August This Day in History on your birthday

3 Aug, 1981 Air Traffic Controllers Strike

1981 : 13,000 Air traffic controllers walked off the job today in hopes that the U.S. federal government would agree to their demands for better pay. President Ronald Reagan had warned them they would be fired if they went on strike and a short time later he did have them fired.

3 Aug, 1914 World War I Declaration of War

1914 : Germany and France Declare war on the other signaling the beginning of the first World War.

3 Aug, 1923 Calvin Coolidge Sworn In As President

1923 : Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as president of the United States after learning that President Warren Harding had collapsed and died while visiting California the day before. He was sworn in by his father, Colonel John C. Coolidge at his father's farmhouse in Plymouth, Vermont. Find More What happened in 1923.

3 Aug, 1940 England World War II

1940 : British troops hammered the Germans with air raids which the former claimed as “a smashing success”. Supplies, harbors, and airplane hangers were targeted in over 100 German cities. The British hoped to smash the Nazi blitzkrieg at its source. However, in retaliation, German war planes retaliated by bombing north western England.

3 Aug, 1957 Cuba Fidel Castro

1957 : Rebel resistance and strikes were plaguing President Fulgenico Batista’s government in Cuba. Fidel Castro’s forces poured down from their secret mountain hide- out to fight with Batista’s troops. A news blackout was in effect. The revolutionary stronghold in Santiago De Cuba had armed men demand gas from a gas station and then set fire to it.

100 years of price Change

100 Years Of Price Changes

We spent many hours researching cost of living information for each year and I created this page after being asked a number of times about why I did not include current prices alongside our cost of living information for each year and thought this was the easiest way to make the information available. includes Average Cost Of New Home, Average Wages, New Car cost, Gallon Of Gas and a 1lb Hamburger Meat, 1920 to 2023

3 Aug, 1958 North Pole Nautilus

1958 : The US Nuclear Submarine Nautilus is the first undersea vessel to reach the Geographic North Pole.

3 Aug, 1961 Arms Build Up During Cold War

1961 : President John F. Kennedy got approval from Congress to spend $958 million to purchase missiles, planes, and war ships to bolster the American military. This arms build up was felt to be needed because of the communist threat to West Berlin and other areas. Kennedy got powers from Congress to call 250,000 reservists into active duty and to extend their tour of duty for one year.

3 Aug, 1970 U.S.A. Hurricane Celia

August 3, 1970 : The category 3 hurricane "Hurricane Celia" makes landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas killing 15 in Texas and hundreds of millions of dollars of damage.

3 Aug, 1977 CIA and Mind Control

1977 : As of today the CIA has spent a total of $25 million over 25 years started in 1950 to study mind control and brainwashing. Research was done by Dr. D. Ewen Cameron on sensory deprivation, isolation, and his own methods of “psychic driving”. He did these experiments at McGill University in Montreal. The psychiatric patients that Cameron used as subjects were damaged for life. The CIA also funded drug experiments on patients and staff at Memorial Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. Brainwashing experiments were also done at Cornell University Medical Center and Dr. Carl Pfeiffer did LSD studies on federal inmates in Atlanta, and the Bordentown Reformatory in New Jersey from 1955-64.

3 Aug, 1978 Israel Bombs Southern Lebanon

1978 : Israel retaliates after Palestinian terrorists bomb a Tel Aviv market by sending in bombers to a guerrilla base southern Lebanon.

3 Aug, 1978 Canada Commonwealth Games

1978 : The Queen opens the 11th Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Canada.

3 Aug, 1982 U.S.A. Sodomy Arrest

1982 : Michael Hardwick is arrested for sodomy after a police officer observes him having sex with another man in his own bedroom in Georgia. In 1986 the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, ruling by a 5-4 vote that states could continue to treat certain types of consensual sex as criminal acts.

3 Aug, 1989 Soviet Union Flight 007 Case Settled

1989 : Flight 007, a Korean Air Lines plane, shot down in Soviet territory six years ago killing all 269 passengers. After 6 years 137 family members won $50 million in damages. In court the jury deemed that the pilot was guilty of “willful misconduct.”

Born This Day In History August 3

Celebrating Birthdays Today

Tony Bennett

Born: Anthony Dominick Benedetto August 3 1926 Astoria, Queens, New York City, New York, U.S.

Known For : Tony Bennett is an American singer whose range includes popular music, standards, show tunes, and jazz. The song most associated with him is the classic "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" which he recorded in 1962. During his long and illustrious career he has sold more than 50 million records worldwide and won fifteen Grammy's and two Emmy Awards. His first number 1 was "Because of You" in 1951 and followed that with "Cold, Cold Heart" and "Rags To Riches" in 1953. He is still active in his music career and can still be counted on for charity events in his 90s, providing a testament to his longevity in the business.


3 Aug, 1990 Great Britain Heat Wave

August 3, 1990 : Great Britain is in the grips of a heat wave and the highest recorded temperature in modern recorded history is recorded at Nailstone, Leicestershire of 37.1C, or 99F. The 1990 record is broken during the August heat wave of 2003 when a temperature 38.5C or 101.3F was recorded Brogdale, Kent.

3 Aug, 2003 US Episcopal Church Approves Gay Bishop

2003 : The Episcopal Church of The USA has voted to approve the appointment of Mr Robinson an openly gay bishop who has lived with his male partner for 14 years.

3 Aug, 2004 U.S.A. Statue of Liberty

2004 : The Statue of Liberty was reopened for tourists for the first time since the September 11th attacks.

3 Aug, 2006 Saab Ends Arms Sales To Venezuela

2006 : Swedish defense company, Saab states that it will no longer sell arms to Venezuela after a United States embargo is put in place against Venezuela. The company had been selling arms to Venezuela for twenty years but decided to comply after the embargo banned any company that uses American parts from selling to Venezuela.

3 Aug, 2008 China Olympic Torch

2008 : The Olympic torch passed through the Sichuan province of China on its way to Beijing for the 2008 Summer Games. The torch was originally scheduled to pass through in June but could not due to a large earthquake that killed nearly 70,000 people in the province in May.

3 Aug, 1918 Russia Germans Killed

1918 : Russian revolutionaries killed 700 Germans in a blast at Kiev, which indicates a terror campaign has started against the German oppressors. Also, Field Marshal Von Eachhorns was murdered, his assassin fleeing from Russia.

3 Aug, 1931 U.S.A. Sheep In Texas

August 3, 1931 : Old time sheep ranchers in San Angelo, Texas recall that the first sheep were brought into West Texas in 1875 by John Arden who drove the animals from California. Arden died a couple of years later, but his widow started a partnership with Chas. B. Metcalf and fenced in 20,000 acres for the sheep. The fencing was unique as it was wire netting, which had never been seen in the area before. The Arden farm had an enormous number of sheep.

3 Aug, 2004 Savannah River Research Campus

2004 : Dr. Bill Summers, a key scientist looked on as dignitaries turned the sod on the Savannah River Research Campus which was built for researching hydrogen as an alternative fuel source. A total of 9.2 million was spent on the project. Forty to fifty top scientists will be working on the new venture, hopefully starting a new era of universities and business cooperating to solve the energy crisis.

3 Aug, 2009 Japan Trial By Jury Retried

2009 : Japan held the first jury trial since World War II. The introduction of a jury system after nearly sixty years of a very private justice system leads many to believe the judicial process will become more democratic and fair than in the past.

3 Aug, 2011 Egypt Ex-President Mubarak Denies Charges

2011 : Egypt's ex-president, Hosni Mubarak, denied all charges of corruption and charges that he ordered the killing of protesters on the first day of his trial in Cairo. Mubarak was forced from office by protesters in February 2011.

3 Aug, 2011 US Debt Bill Signed Into Law

2011 : President Barack Obama signs into law the US Debt Bill to raise the US debt limit by debt limit by $900 billion from its previous level of US$14.3 trillion.

3 Aug, 2012 First Saudi Arabian Woman Competes in Olympics

2012 : Wojdan Shahrkhani became the first Saudi Arabian woman to compete at the Olympic games after being a part of the +78kg Judo competition. The sixteen year old was defeated by Melissa Mojica the Puerto Rican competitor.

3 Aug, 2013 China Tallest Tower Gets Last Beam

2013 : China's tallest building, called the Shanghai Tower, was completed after the last steel beam was installed onto the top of the building. Workers now began on the interior with the entire project expected to be finished in 2014.

Soccer and Rugby

'The game of American football (hereafter referred to just as "football") developed out of something like a cross between association football (or soccer) and rugby. Rugby itself grew out of the soccer tradition in England, so soccer is truly at the very core of this sport. However, as both games made their way across the Atlantic, they were both played at colleges and universities, and out of those two games, football was born. The earliest history of the sport tells us that no single variety of the game was played; some schools played essentially soccer, others rugby, while still others played various combinations of the two (and certainly without any formalized rules). It what is commonly billed as the first college football game, Princeton and Rutgers played each other on November 6, 1869 at Rutgers in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The game was played under modified London Football Association rules - for example, players could only kick the ball, not touch it with their hands and each score, called a goal, counted for one point (Rutgers beat Princeton 6-4). However, unlike soccer, there were 25 players on each side, not the usual 11. This first college game was essentially soccer, but nevertheless laid the groundwork for the modern game as we know it today. In order to do that, however, rules would have to be put in place to truly differentiate the sport.'

'After Princeton and Rutgers got things started, other eastern universities began to cotton on to playing the game, first with Columbia University, and later other schools like Harvard and Yale. In 1873, representatives from Columbia, Princeton, Rutgers and Yale met to formalize rules; however, these rules were based mostly on soccer. Harvard, which played a more rugby-heavy style, refused to attend the meeting, continuing to play the game their way, notably in two contests against McGill University (from Montreal). The two schools played essentially the same type of game, with rugby-style rules, including running with the ball. As Harvard slowly won over the other schools to its style of play, it necessitated a new meeting to standardize new rules. That meeting, known as the Massasoit Convention, created rules based largely on the Rugby Football Union code. The game was inching closer to what we know today as football.'