● March 3 in History
1821 — American tailor and inventor Thomas L Jennings, 30, receives a US patent for his “dryscouring” process, the forerunner of dry-cleaning. 1861 — Alexander II of Russia signs the Emancipation Manifesto, freeing serfs.
1865 — The first branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank — later Banking Corporation (HSBC) — opens in Hong Kong. It was founded by Thomas Sutherland, a young Scotsman working for a large shipping firm in Hong Kong. Local and foreign trade in Hong Kong and at ports in China and Japan had increased rapidly in recent years and Sutherland recognised that businesses needed better local banking facilities.
1875 — Georges Bizet’s opera “Carmen”, based on the novella by Prosper Mérimée, premieres at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. Bizet dies suddenly on June 3, aged 36.
1938 — Oil is discovered in Saudi Arabia by the California Arabian Standard Oil Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil of California, which was granted the concession by King Ibn Saud on May 23 1933. Following this discovery at Dammam oil well No 7, almost five years later, the largest source of crude oil in the world is revealed. Oil revenues become a crucial source of wealth for the king who no longer has to rely on taxes from pilgrimages to Mecca, which fell from 100,000 a year to below 40,000 during the Great Depression.
1955 — Elvis Presley makes his first TV appearance on “The Louisiana Hayride” on KSLATV, the CBS affiliate in Shreveport.
1974 — Turkish Airlines Flight 981, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 en route from Istanbul to London with a stop in Paris, crashes into the Ermenonville Forest outside Paris, killing all 346 aboard.
1975 — First People’s Choice Awards — Favourite film: “The Sting”; film actors: John Wayne and Barbra Streisand; television performers: Alan Alda and Telly Savalas, and Mary Tyler Moore; all-around performers: Bob Hope and Carol Burnett; singers: Mac Davis, and Olivia Newton John and Lynn Anderson.
1992 — Bosnia and Herzegovina is established during the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
2005 — Steve Fossett, 60, completes the first solo, nonstop unrefuelled circumnavigation of the world in an aeroplane. Piloting the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, a specialised single-engine jet aircraft with 13 fuel tanks, he took off from Salina, Kansas, on February 28 and returns there after 67:01:10.