On This Day in History

February 3

Historical Events

1451 Sultan Mehmed II, the Conqueror inherits the throne of the Ottoman Empire.

1509 The Battle of Diu, naval battle at port of Diu, India between Portugal and the Ottoman Empire, establishes Portuguese trading control.

1870 US state of Iowa ratifies the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution allowing suffrage for all races and colors.

1928 Paleoanthropologist Davidson Black reports his findings on the ancient human fossils found at Zhoukoudian, China in the journal Nature and declares them to be a new species he names 'Sinanthropus pekinensis' (now known as 'Homo erectus').

The Hastings post office damaged after the 1931 earthquake

1931 New Zealand's worst natural disaster, the Hawke's Bay earthquake, kills 256 and injures thousands, devastating Napier and the Hawke's Bay region.

1966 First soft landing on the Moon, by the Soviet spacecraft Luna 9.

More Historical Events

Famous Birthdays

Ferdinand Magellan 1480 - 1521 Felix Mendelssohn 1809 - 1847

Pretty Boy Floyd 1904 - 1934 Elizabeth Holmes 40th Birthday

More Famous Birthdays

Famous Deaths

Johannes Gutenberg Died in 1468 Theodore Dwight Weld 1803 - 1895

Also Woodrow Wilson, Buddy Holly and Tony Trabert.

America’s First Woman Doctor

Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the United States to receive a medical degree and the first woman on the British medical register, was born on this day.

Learn About Elizabeth Blackwell