TODAY IN HISTORY - MAY 3RD

1802 – Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city.

1855 – American adventurer William Walker departs from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Nicaragua.

1879 – Fergus McMaster, Australian businessman and soldier, co-founded Qantas (d. 1950) is born.

1901 – The Great Fire of 1901 begins in Jacksonville, Florida.

1921 – Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer (d. 1989) is born.

1921 – West Virginia becomes the first state to legislate a broad sales tax, but does not implement it until a number of years later due to enforcement issues.

1933 – James Brown, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actor (The Famous Flames and The J.B.'s) (d. 2006) is born.

1934 – Frankie Valli, American singer and actor (The Four Seasons and The Wonder Who?) is born.

1937 – Gone with the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

1948 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Shelley v. Kraemer that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable.

1951 – London's Royal Festival Hall opens with the Festival of Britain.

1951 – The United States Senate Committee on Armed Services and United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations begin their closed door hearings into the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman.

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

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

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

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 African-American Civil Rights Movement.

1973 – The 108-story Sears Tower in Chicago is topped out at 1,451 feet as the world's tallest building.

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.

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.

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).

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.

2003 – New Hampshire's famous Old Man of the Mountain collapses.

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.