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“A Streetcar Named Desire” opens on Broadway

Born on This Day

Jean-Luc Godard

1930 - 2022

French writer and director whose innovative storytelling in "Breathless" and "Alphaville" pioneered the French New Wave.

Ozzy Osbourne

1948 - 2025

English singer-songwriter, reality TV star and lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Black Sabbath.

Julianne Moore

1960 -

Academy Award-winning actress and star of "Still Alice," "Boogie Nights," "The Hours" and "Far From Heaven."

Jean-Luc GodardRobert Eric

Ozzy OsbourneLarry Busacca/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival

Julianne MooreGetty Images

1847

DEC3

Escaped slave-turned-abolitionist Frederick Douglass publishes his first antislavery newspaper, The North Star. The title referred to Polaris, the bright star that helped guide those fleeing slavery to the North—and freedom.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on December 3rd

Illinois becomes the 21st state

Illinois achieves full statehood on this day. Though Illinois presented unique challenges to immigrants unaccustomed to the soil and vegetation of the area, it grew to become a bustling and densely populated state. The prairie lands east of the Mississippi and west of Lake Michigan were inhabited for generations by the Illinois nation, a confederation […]

Armistice signed in First Balkan War

Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro sign an armistice with Turkey, ending the fighting in the first Balkan War. During the two-month conflict, a military coalition between Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro—known as the Balkan League—expelled Turkey from all the Ottoman Empire’s former European possessions, with the exception of Constantinople (now Istanbul). In January 1913, a […]

First human heart transplant

On December 3, 1967, 53-year-old Louis Washkansky receives the first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. Washkansky, a South African grocer dying from chronic heart disease, received the transplant from Denise Darvall, a 25-year-old woman who was fatally injured in a car accident. Surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who trained at […]

Eleven people killed in a stampede outside Who concert in Cincinnati, Ohio

Eleven people, including three high-school students, were killed on December 3, 1979, when a crowd of general-admission ticket-holders to a Who concert in Cincinnati, Ohio, surged forward in an attempt to enter Riverfront Coliseum and secure prime unreserved seats inside. It would be one of the deadliest rock-concert incidents in history. The general-admission ticketing policy […]

Last AMC Pacer rolls off assembly line

On December 3, 1979, the last Pacer rolls off the assembly line at the American Motors Corporation (AMC) factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin. When the car first came on the market in 1975, it was a sensation, hailed as the car of the future. “When you buy any other car,” ads said, “all you end up […]

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Explosion kills thousands at pesticide plant In Bhopal, India

An explosion at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, on December 3, 1984, leads to the worst industrial accident in history. Decades later, the official death toll remains disputed. At least 5,000 people died immediately, according to official estimates, approximately 20,000 died over time, and another half-million were injured when toxic gas enveloped […]

Five-year-old disappears—abductor is later ID’d by clothing fibers

Five-year-old Melissa Brannen disappears without a trace from a Christmas party in Fairfax, Virginia. The intensive forensic investigation that followed led to the arrest of party guest Caleb Hughes and, in the process, demonstrated how technically advanced crime solving had become. After interviewing everyone who had been at the party, investigators determined that Hughes had […]

Bush and Gorbachev suggest Cold War is coming to an end

Meeting off the coast of Malta, President George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev issue statements strongly suggesting that the long-standing animosities at the core of the Cold War might be coming to an end. Commentators in both the United States and Russia went farther and declared that the Cold War was over. The talks […]

First SMS text message is sent

On December 3, 1992, the first SMS text message in history is sent: Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old engineer, uses a personal computer to send the text message “Merry Christmas” via the Vodafone network to the phone of a colleague. Papworth, while working for the now-defunct Anglo-French IT services company Sema Group Telecoms, was part of […]

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