May 3

2023 – Nine students and a security guard are killed in the Belgrade school shooting, the first attack of its kind in Serbia.

2016 – Eighty-eight thousand people are evacuated from their homes in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada as a wildfire rips through the community, destroying approximately 2,400 homes and buildings.

2015 – Two gunmen launch an attempted attack on an anti-Islam event in Garland, Texas, which was held in response to the Charlie Hebdo shooting.

2007 – The three-year-old British girl Madeleine McCann disappears in Praia da Luz, Portugal, starting "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history".

2006 – Armavia Flight 967 crashes into the Black Sea near Sochi International Airport in Sochi, Russia, killing 113 people.

2001 – The United States loses its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission was formed in 1947.

2000 – The sport of geocaching begins, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.

1999 – Infiltration of Pakistani soldiers on Indian side results in the Kargil War.

1999 – The southwestern portion of Oklahoma City is devastated by an F5 tornado, killing forty-five people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. The tornado is one of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak. This tornado also produces the highest wind speed ever recorded, measured at 301 +/- 20 mph (484 +/- 32 km/h). In meteorology, the term “May 3” is synonymous with the F5 tornado.

1987 – A crash by Bobby Allison at the Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama fencing at the start-finish line would lead NASCAR to develop the restrictor plate for the following season both at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega.

1986 – Twenty-one people are killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb explodes on Air Lanka Flight 512 at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka.

1979 – Margaret Thatcher wins the United Kingdom general election. The following day, she becomes the first female British Prime Minister.

1978 – The first unsolicited bulk commercial email (which would later become known as "spam") is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.

1971 – Erich Honecker becomes First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, remaining in power until 1989.

1968 – Eighty-five people are killed when Braniff International Airways Flight 352 crashes near Dawson, Texas.

1963 – The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responds with violent force to stop the "Birmingham campaign" protesters. Images of the violent suppression are transmitted worldwide, bringing new-found attention to the civil rights movement.

1957 – Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.

1953 – Two men are rescued from a semitrailer that crashed over the side of the Pit River Bridge before it fell into the Sacramento River. Amateur photographer Virginia Schau photographs "Rescue on Pit River Bridge", the first and only winning submission for the Pulitzer Prize for Photography to have been taken by a woman.

1952 – The Kentucky Derby is televised nationally for the first time, on the CBS network.

1952 – Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict of the United States land a plane at the North Pole.