May 3

Events

• 1494 - Christopher Columbus first sights land that will be called Jamaica.
• 1802 – Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city.
• 1915 – The poem In Flanders Fields is written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.
• 1921 - Ireland is partitioned.
• 1937 – Gone with the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
• 1945 - World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.
• 1973 – The Sears Tower in Chicago is topped out as the world's tallest building.
• 1979 – Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher becomes the United Kingdom's first female prime minister as the Labour government is ousted in parliamentary elections.
• 2006 - Terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui is sentenced to life in prison in Alexandria, Virginia.
• 2009 - The Norwegian section of Metapedia is launched. [1]

Births

• 612 - Constantine III, Byzantine Emperor (d. 641)
• 1469 – Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian historian and political author (d. 1527)
• 1844 - Edouard Drumont, anti-Jewish French journalist (d. 1917)
• 1874 - François Coty, French perfume manufacturer and patriotic publisher (d. 1934)
• 1896 - Karl Allmenroder, German World War I Ace (d. 1917)
• 1898 – Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel (d. 1978)
• 1919 - Pete Seeger, communist folk singer (d. 2014)

Deaths

• 1152 - Matilda of Boulogne, Queen of England (b. 1105)
• 1853 - Juan Donoso Cortés, Spanish diplomat and politician (b. 1809)