3 October: On this day in history
What events happened on 3 October in history? We round up the events, births and deaths…
3 October 52 BC
In Gaul, the Arverni chieftain Vercingetorix surrenders to the Roman commander Julius Caesar.
3 October 1283
After being captured by forces loyal to King Edward I and sentenced to death for high treason, Dafydd ap Gruffudd, Prince of Gwynedd, is hanged, drawn and quartered in Shrewsbury.
3 October 1881
Mormon leader Orson Pratt died in Salt Lake City. He was the last surviving member of the original Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as chosen by Joseph Smith Jr, founder of the Mormon church.
3 October 1929
The kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia by its ruler Alexander I. Five years later, in an incident that was dramatically captured on newsreel, he was assassinated in Marseilles.
3 October 1932
Iraq becomes an independent state.
3 October 1952
Britain detonated its first atomic device in a lagoon off Trimouille Island in the uninhabited Monte Bello Islands off the west coast of Australia. Code named 'Hurricane', the bomb was detonated inside the hull of HMS Plym, an anchored frigate which was almost completely vaporised by the explosion. The decision to carry out the test had been made by Clement Attlee's Labour government, but by the time the device was actually ready for testing Winston Churchill's Conservative government was in power.
3 October 1990
After 45 years of Cold War division, East and West Germany were reunified after East Berlin and the five states of the German Democratic Republic were incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany.
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