Browse Historical Events by Day: What Happened on February 3rd?

Death of Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor.

King John of England offers his kingdom to the Pope, making England a papal fief.

Mehmed II, inherits the throne to the Ottoman Empire when his father Murad II dies. Mehmed II also known as The Conqueror is one of the famous sultans of Ottoman Empire. He had ruled the Ottoman for a brief time, from 1444 to 1446, after his father. After that time Sultan Murad II renounced the throne. Mehmed II ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1451 to 1481. More

John Marshall is appointed as Chief Justice of the United States.

The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Voting Rights, is ratified allowing suffrage for all races and colors. More

The 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, establishing the federal income tax. More

The Twin Peaks Tunnel in San Francisco begins service as the world's longest streetcar tunnel.

The music album "Music from Big Pink" by The Band is released, influencing the Americana music genre.

The Soviet Union's Luna 9 (Lunik 9) makes the first soft landing on the moon and transmits photographic data from the Moon's surface to Earth. It was the first spacecraft to achieve a soft lunar landing, preceding the U.S. Surveyor 1 soft lander by about 4 months. The probe also proved that the lunar surface could support the weight of a lander and that an object would not sink into a loose layer of dust as some models predicted. Luna 9 launched on 31 January 1966 at 11:41 UT (14:41 Moscow time) from Baikonur Cosmodrome and reached the Moon on 3 February. More

American astronaut Eileen Collins becomes, the first woman to pilot a Space shuttle as she pilots the Discovery in what was the first flight of the new joint Russian- American Space Program. In July 1999, Collins went on to be the first woman to be a Shuttle commander on the STS-93 Columbia. More