GMT 10/3/2017

1776 Congress borrows five million dollars to halt the rapid depreciation of paper money in the colonies.

1862 At the Battle of Corinth, in Mississippi, a Union army defeats the Confederates.

1873 Captain Jack and three other Modoc Indians are hanged in Oregon for the murder of General Edward Canby.

1876 John L. Routt, the Colorado Territory governor, is elected the first state governor of Colorado in the Centennial year of the U.S.

1906 The first conference on wireless telegraphy in Berlin adopts SOS as warning signal.

1929 The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes officially changes its name to Yugoslavia.

1931 The comic strip Dick Tracy first appears in the New York News.

1940 U.S. Army adopts airborne, or parachute, soldiers. Airborne troops were later used in World War II for landing troops in combat and infiltrating agents into enemy territory.

1941 The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart as detective Sam Spade, opens.

1942 Germany conducts the first successful test flight of a V-2 missile, which flies perfectly over a 118-mile course.

1944 German troops evacuate Athens, Greece.

1951 A "shot is heard around the world" when New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson hits a home run in the bottom of the ninth inning, beating the Brooklyn Dodgers to win the National League pennant.

1952 The UK successfully conducts a nuclear weapon, becoming the world's third nuclear power

1955 Two children's television programs and a family sitcom all destined to become classics debut: Captain Kangaroo, Mickey Mouse Club, and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

1963 A violent coup in Honduras ends a period of political reform and ushers in two decades of military rule.

1963 The year Armymann50 was hatched

1985 The Space Shuttle Atlantis makes its maiden flight.

1989 Art Shell becomes the first African American to coach a professional football team, the Los Angeles Raiders.

1990 After 40 years of division, East and West Germany are reunited as one nation.

1993 Battle of Mogadishu, in which 18 US soldiers and some 1,000 Somalis are killed during an attempt to capture officials of the warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid's organization. (Black Hawk Down)

1995 Former pro football star and actor O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, ending what many called "the Trial of the Century.".

2008 The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase distressed assets of financial corporations and supply cash directly to banks to keep them afloat.

Born on October 3

1800 George Bancroft, historian, known as the "Father of American History" for his 10-volume A History of the United States.

1900 Thomas Wolfe, American novelist (Look Homeward Angel) not to be confused with American novelist Tom Wolfe (The Right Stuff).

1916 James Herriot, Yorkshire veterinarian and author of All Creatures Great and Small.

1925 Gore Vidal, writer ("Myra Breckinridge," "Burr," "Lincoln"); one of the screenwriters on the movie Ben Hur (1959