December 3 – Some important events on this day.
1586 👉🏼 Sir Thomas Herriot introduces potatoes to England from Colombia
1676 👉🏼 Battle of Lund (Scanian War): Swedish army of 8,000 defeats much larger joint Danish/Dutch force of 13,000
1736 👉🏼 Astronomer Anders Celsius takes measurements that confirm Newton’s theory that the earth was an ellipsoid rather than the previously accepted sphere
1775 👉🏼 First official US flag raised (Grand Union Flag) aboard naval vessel USS Alfred
1854 👉🏼 Eureka Stockade: In what is claimed by many to be the birth of Australian democracy, more than 20 goldminers at Ballarat, Victoria, are killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences.
In 1854 a league of gold miners in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, which was then a colony of the United Kingdom, launched a revolt against their colonial government over miner’s licensing and a lack of representation despite taxation via that license. Various other actions of the government, police and military inflamed the protests, which began during the Victorian gold rush of the mid-19th century.
The rebellion began in early December. On the first, the miners gathered and swore allegiance to the flag of the Southern Cross, repudiating the Union Jack in a potent symbol of independence. The miners hastily built a stockade and defended it from a swift attack by Australian colonial forces on this day. The confrontation was brief, but violent; at least 27 people died, mostly rebelling miners.
Some of the captured rebels were put on trial in Melbourne, and the outpouring of public support for their cause led to the passing of electoral reform laws in Victoria, mandating suffrage for male colonists in the lower house of the Victorian parliament based on landholdings. Women’s suffrage, also based on landholding, followed five years later. The battle at Eureka is thus considered to be an important part in the development of Australian democracy and independence.
1910 👉🏼 Neon lights first publicly displayed (Paris Auto Show)
1967 👉🏼 1st human heart transplant performed in South Africa by Dr Christiaan Barnard on Louis Washkansky
1775 👉🏼 First official US flag raised (Grand Union Flag) aboard naval vessel USS Alfred
1947 👉🏼 “A Streetcar Named Desire” opens on Broadway
1967 👉🏼 Assassination attempt made on Bob Marley and others during concert rehearsals in Jamaica
1967 👉🏼 53-year-old Louis Washkansky receives the first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.
1984 👉🏼 Bhopal disaster: Union Carbide pesticide plant leak 45 tons of methyl isocyanate and other toxic compounds in Bhopal, India, kills 2,259 (official figure) – other estimates as high as 16,000 (including later deaths) and over half a million injured
1989 👉🏼 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George H. W. Bush, declare the Cold War over
1999 👉🏼 NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere
2017 👉🏼 First pizza party in space held by astronauts of the International Space Station
2019 👉🏼 Spotify say Drake the most streamed star of the 2010s with 28 billion streams, Ed Sheeran’s “Shape Of You” most streamed track with 2.4 billion streams