A boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa, resulting in more than 360 deaths.
3 October 1873
A Friday in history
Weekday
Friday
Season
Autumn (N. Hemisphere)
Century
19th century
Records
387
- 2013
- 2008
The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, establishing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, commonly referred to as a bailout of the U.S. financial system, was enacted.
2003Roy Horn of the American entertainment duo Siegfried & Roy (both pictured) was mauled by a tiger during a performance at the Mirage on the Las Vegas Strip.
1992Sinéad O'Connor tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on live television.
- 1991
Nadine Gordimer became the first South African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- 1989
Major Moisés Giroldi of the Panama Defense Forces failed in his attempt to overthrow dictator Manuel Noriega.
- 1981
A hunger strike by Irish republican prisoners at HM Prison Maze outside Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended after seven months and ten deaths.
1963Oswaldo López Arellano replaced Honduran president Ramón Villeda Morales in a violent coup, initiating two decades of military rule.
1962Mercury-Atlas 8, the fifth United States crewed space mission, was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, carrying astronaut Wally Schirra (pictured).
1953Vancouver's Holy Rosary Cathedral was dedicated by Archbishop William Mark Duke, fifty-three years after it first opened.
1952The United Kingdom successfully conducted its first nuclear test, becoming the world's third state with nuclear weapons.
1951In Major League Baseball, the New York Giants' Bobby Thomson hit the "Shot Heard 'Round the World", a game-winning home run, to win the National League pennant.
1951The First Battle of Maryang-san, widely regarded as one of the Australian Army's greatest accomplishments during the Korean War, began.
1935Italian forces under General Emilio De Bono invaded Abyssinia during the opening stages of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War.
1849American author Edgar Allan Poe was found semi-conscious and delirious in Baltimore under mysterious circumstances; it was the last time he was seen in public before his death four days later.
1792Spanish forces departed Valdivia to suppress the indigenous Huilliche uprising in southern Chile.
1602Anglo-Spanish War: An English fleet intercepted and attacked six Spanish ships at the Battle of the Narrow Seas (pictured).
- 1392
Muhammad VII became the twelfth sultan of the Emirate of Granada.
Photo archive
24 historic images from this day — tap to open the gallery.
What was life like?
Prices, jobs, food, music and everyday routine — the world as it felt to live in.
Sources & fact check
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