THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― DECEMBER 3

December 3 is the 337th day of the year (338th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 28 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Thursday or Saturday (58 in 400 years each) than on Tuesday or Wednesday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Friday or Sunday (56).

NATIONAL ROOF OVER YOUR HEAD DAY 

1468 – Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano succeed their father, Piero de Medici, as rulers of Florence, Italy. 

1762 – Spain ceded to France all lands west of the Mississippi River – the territory known as Upper Louisiana. THis land would eventually be sold to the U.S. as the Louisiana Purchase, in 1803.

1864 – Major General William Tecumseh Sherman meets with slight resistance from Confederate troops at Thomas Station on his famous march to the sea.

1901 – In a State of the Union message, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt asks Congress to curb the power of trusts "within reasonable limits". [And THIS is how it starts.]

1919 – After nearly 20 years of planning and construction, including two collapses causing 89 deaths, the Quebec Bridge opens to traffic.

1964 – Free Speech Movement: Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest of the UC Regents' decision to forbid protests on UC property. Just so universities can now LIMIT free speech.

1973 – Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.

1979 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini becomes the first Supreme Leader of Iran.

1984 – Bhopal disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills more than 3,800 people outright and injures 150,000–600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.

1989 – Cold War: In a meeting off the coast of Malta, U.S. President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev release statements indicating that the Cold War between NATO and the Soviet Union may be coming to an end.

1994 – The PlayStation was released in Japan.

1997 – In Ottawa, Canada, representatives from 121 countries sign the Ottawa Treaty prohibiting manufacture and deployment of anti-personnel landmines. The United States, People's Republic of China, and Russia do not sign the treaty, however.

1999 – NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere.

2007 – Winter storms cause the Chehalis River to flood many cities in Lewis County, Washington, and close a 20-mile portion of Interstate 5 for several days. At least eight deaths and billions of dollars in damages are blamed on the floods.

2009 – A suicide bombing at a hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, kills 25 people, including three ministers of the Transitional Federal Government.

2012 – At least 475 people are killed after Typhoon Bopha makes landfall in the Philippines.

2014 – The Japanese space agency, JAXA, launches the space explorer Hayabusa 2 from the Tanegashima Space Center on a six-year round trip mission to an asteroid to collect rock samples.

TODAY'S BIRTHS

1616 – John Wallis, English mathematician and cryptographer (d. 1703)

1826 – George B. McClellan, American general and politician, 24th Governor of New Jersey (d. 1885)

1938 – Sally Shlaer, American mathematician and engineer (d. 1998)

From Wikipedia and Google, except as noted.