Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 3

This is a list of selected February 3 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.

To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.

← February 2	February 4 →

Staging area

Images

Use only ONE image at a time

• 
  Emperor Meiji
• 
  Emperor Meiji
• 
  Mossel Bay in 2006
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  Monument to Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper near Clear Lake, Iowa
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  Painting of the Battle of San Lorenzo
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  José de San Martín
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  James I of Aragon entering Murcia
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  Steve Jobs

Ineligible

Blurb	Reason
Setsubun in Japan;	date in infobox doesn't agree with date in the lead
Feast day of Dom Justo Takayama in Japan and the Philippines;	citation check
1488 – Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias landed in Mossel Bay, becoming the first known European to have sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and the southern tip of Africa.	lots of CN tags (5)
1509 – Turkish–Portuguese War: Portugal defeated a joint fleet of Mamlûk Burji Sultanate of Egypt, Ottoman Empire, the Zamorin of Calicut and the Sultan of Gujarat at the Battle of Diu off the coast of Diu, India.	unreferenced section
1781 – Fourth Anglo-Dutch War: British forces captured the Dutch island of Sint Eustatius after a brief skirmish.	needs citations
1807 – Napoleonic Wars: The United Kingdom captured Montevideo, now the capital of Uruguay, from the Spanish Empire.	needs more footnotes; Montevideo not bold because it's not an appropriate target article
1815 – The first factory for the industrial production of cheese opened in Switzerland.	date not in article, refimprove section
1867 – Crown Prince Mutsuhito succeeded his father Kōmei as Emperor of Japan, taking the title Meiji.	needs more footnotes
1913 – The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, allowing Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states or basing it on census results.	refimprove section
1916 – A fire destroyed the Centre Block, the main building of the Canadian parliamentary complex on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Ontario.	needs update
1931 – New Zealand's deadliest natural disaster, the 7.9 MW Hawke's Bay earthquake, struck, killing 256.	refimprove section
1966 – The Soviet spacecraft Luna 9 became the first space probe to land on the Moon and transmit pictures from the lunar surface.	refimprove section
1967 – Ronald Ryan became the last person to be legally executed in Australia, sparking public protests across the country.	multiple issues
1971 – New York City Police officer Frank Serpico, who had reported police corruption to the department and the press, was shot and wounded under questionable circumstances.	lead too short
1984 – A woman under the care of Dr. John Buster of the Harbor–UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, gave birth to a baby that resulted from the first successful embryo transfer from one person to another.	refimprove section
1989 – Alfredo Stroessner', whose rule as president of Paraguay for 35 years was marked by uninterrupted repression in his country, was overthrown in a military coup by Andrés Rodríguez.	Stroessner: refimprove; Rodríguez: unreferenced section
1998 – A U.S. Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler inadvertently severed a cable supporting a cable-car gondola in Cavalese, Italy, killing 20 passengers.	citations needed

Eligible

• 1266 – Mudéjar revolt: King James I of Aragon entered the formerly Muslim-held city of Murcia (depicted), following its surrender three days earlier.
• 1852 – The Argentine Confederation was defeated in the Platine War by an alliance consisting of Brazil, Uruguay and the Argentine provinces of Entre Ríos and Corrientes.
• 1870 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, granting voting rights to citizens regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude".
• 1933 – Adolf Hitler announced that the conquest of Lebensraum in Eastern Europe, and its "ruthless Germanisation", were the geopolitical objectives of Reich foreign policy.
• 1959 – American rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson died in a plane crash (wreckage pictured) shortly after takeoff from Mason City Municipal Airport in Iowa.
• 1972 – The deadliest blizzard in history began in Iran and continued for a week leaving more than 4,000 people dead.
• 1986 – Steve Jobs purchased Pixar from Lucasfilm and launched it as an independent computer-animation studio.
• 1998 – Despite a large international movement advocating the commutation of her sentence to life imprisonment, Karla Faye Tucker became the first woman to be executed in the United States since 1984.
• 2010 – An edition of L'Homme qui marche I, a bronze sculpture by Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, was sold for £65 million, setting the record for the most expensive sculpture sold at auction.
• 2014 – Russia's first school shooting took place when a student opened fire at School No. 263 in Moscow, resulting in the deaths of a teacher and a police officer.
• Born/died this day: | Scipione Rebiba |b|1504| Caroline von Wolzogen |b|1763| Horace Greeley |b|1811| George Crabbe |d|1832| Giuseppe Moretti |b|1857| Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard |b|1873| Isaac Baker Brown |d|1873| Dolly Rudeman |b|1902 | Tatyana Velikanova |b|1932| Gengoroh Tagame |b|1964| C. N. Annadurai |d|1969

February 3: Feast day of Saint Laurence of Canterbury (Western Christianity); Four Chaplains' Day in the United States (1943)

British bomber flying to join the Battle of Keren

• 1813 – Argentine War of Independence: José de San Martín and the Mounted Grenadiers Regiment defeated Spanish royalist forces in the Battle of San Lorenzo.
• 1941 – Second World War: Free French and British forces (aircraft pictured) began the Battle of Keren to capture the strategic town of Keren in Italian East Africa.
• 1953 – Hundreds of native creoles known as Forros were massacred on São Tomé Island by the colonial administration and Portuguese landowners.
• 2023 – A freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, releasing hazardous materials into the surrounding area.

• Coloman, King of Hungary (d. 1116)
• Abu Bakar of Johor (b. 1833)
• Simone Weil (b. 1909)
• Kanna Hashimoto (b. 1999)

More anniversaries:

• February 2
• February 3
• February 4