December 3 in Pop Culture History

December 3rd History, Trivia, and Fun Facts

December 3rd History Highlights

  • 1910 – Neon lighting was first demonstrated by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show.
  • 1967 – 54-year-old Louis Washkansky received the first human heart transplant, led by Dr. Christian Barnard, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. He lived for 18 days.
  • 1984 – A deadly gas leak at a Union Carbide plant killed more than 4,000 people and injured over 200,000 in Bhopal, India.
  • 1976 – Rocky was widely released. The premiere was on November 21, in NYC.
  • 1994 – The Sony PlayStation was released in Japan.
  • If you were born on December 3rd,
    You were likely conceived the week of… March 11th (same year)

Got Pez?

  • PEZ has a policy that they do not make dispensers of real people (only characters) for the retail market.
    The only three exceptions are Santa Claus, Betsy Ross, and Daniel Boone.
    Betsy and Daniel were from the 1976 ‘Bicentennial Collection,” and Santa is available every year.
  • There was also the rare Elvis PEZ, available in a limited collector’s tin in 2008.

  • PEZ Collectors are called PezHeads.

  • PEZ was invented in 1927 by Austrian Edward Haas in the original flavor of peppermint.
    (PfeffErminZ)

  • The dispensers were first marketed in 1948.
    There is much debate among the PezHeads as to which was the first cartoon PEZ – Mickey Mouse or Popeye.

  • Over 1500 different style dispensers exist.

  • According to the official PEZ website, about 70 million dispensers and 5 billion candies are distributed every year.

December 3rd is…

Disability Day
International Spirit of the Game Day
Let’s Hug Day
Make A Gift Day
National Green Bean Casserole Day

December 3rd Birthday Quotes

“All idealization makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity – it is to destroy it.”
– Joseph Conrad

“I always approach comedy roles pretending they aren’t funny.”
-Brendan Fraser

“I have never let my schooling get in the way of my education.” 
– Mark Twain

“My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel- it is, before all, to make you see. That- and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm- all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.”
– Joseph Conrad

“I’m good with getting older because I feel like one day, I know I will love myself.”
– Amanda Seyfried

December 3rd Birthdays

1755 – Gilbert Stuart, American painter, unfinished George Washington (died in 1828)
1857 – Joseph Conrad, Polish writer (died in 1924)
1907 – Connee Boswell, American jazz singer (died in 1976)
1927 – Andy Williams, American singer (died in 2012)
1930 – Jean-Luc Godard, French-Swiss director
1931 – Jaye P. Morgan, American singer and game show regular
1937 – Bobby Allison, American race car driver
1948 – Ozzy Osbourne, English singer-songwriter
1952 – Benny Hinn, Israeli-American evangelist
1960 – Daryl Hannah, American actress
1960 – Julianne Moore, American Actress
1963 – Terri Schiavo, American medical patient (died in 2005)
1965 – Katarina Witt, German figure skater
1968 – Brendan Fraser, American actor
1968 – Montell Jordan, American singer-songwriter
1973 – Holly Marie Combs, American actress
1980 – Anna Chlumsky, American actress
1980 – Jenna Dewan, American actress, and dancer
1983 – Andy Grammer, American singer
1985 – Amanda Seyfried, American actress

December 3rd History

856 (Earthquake) Tunisia

1818 – Illinois became the 21st US state.

1910 – The neon light was displayed for the first time at the Paris Motor Show at the Grand Palace. The lamp was developed by French inventor Georges Claude. Advertising neon signs started showing up in 1913, notably at the Paris Opera House. The most famous neon sign is probably the Las Vegas sign.

1919 – The Quebec Bridge over the Saint Lawrence River between Sainte-Foy (near Quebec City) and Lévis, Quebec opened.

1922 – The first public Technicolor motion picture film, The Toll of the Sea, was released at the Rialto Theatre, in New York City.

1927 – Putting Pants on Philip, the first Laurel and Hardy film, was released.

1947A Streetcar Named Desire opened on Broadway.

1960 – The musical Camelot debuted at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway.

1966 – #1 Hit December 3, 1966 – December 9, 1966: The New Vaudeville Band – Winchester Cathedral

1976 – An assassination attempt was made on Bob Marley. Shot twice, he quickly recovered.

1979 – Eleven people were killed in a stampede at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum prior to an appearance by The Who. “Festival Seating’ was pretty much to blame – thousands of people had ‘first come, first seated’ tickets, and a soundcheck made many think the concert had already begun.

1984 – The Bhopal-Union Carbide disaster in India killed over 4,000 people, and injured hundreds of thousands.

1988 – #1 Hit December 3, 1988 – December 9, 1988: Will to Power – Baby, I Love Your Way / Freebird Medley

1992 – The Greek oil tanker the Aegean Sea, carrying 80,000 tons of crude oil, ran aground in a storm while approaching A Coruna, Spain, spilling most of the oil.

1994 – #1 Hit December 3, 1994 – December 16, 1994: Boyz II Men – On Bended Knee

1997 – 121 countries signed the treaty prohibiting the manufacture and deployment of anti-personnel land mines in Ottawa, Canada. Notable exceptions were: The United States, the People’s Republic of China, and Russia.

1999 – The Mars Polar Lander crashed into the Martian surface.

2010The Black Swan was released in theaters.

2012 (Typhoon) At least 475 people were killed after Typhoon Bopha made landfall in the Philippines.

Today’s Random Trivia and Shower Thoughts

“The truth is protected by a battalion of lies” – Joseph Stalin

In the King Kong movies, they find King Kong on an island that also has dinosaurs on it, and yet they choose not to bring back any dinosaurs for some reason.
That would be a cool movie. An island filled with dinosaurs!

Truman Capote – Real Name: Truman Streckfus Persons Streckfus

The Scary Statistic: Air Travel Accident odds: 1-in-20,000

Always and Never are two words to always remember never to use.

The Beatles album cover for HELP does not spell out HELP in flag semaphore. It is NUVJ because the photographer thought it looked better.

The Capital of Brazil is Brasilia

The eleven points of the maple leaf of the Canadian flag have no special significance: the number and arrangement of the points were chosen after wind tunnel tests and the chosen pattern is the least blurred under high winds.

TV Quotes… “You’ve got spunk… I hate spunk!” (Lou Grant) on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”

William Shakespeare was married under the name “William Shagspere”.

The term “junkie” comes from the fact that heroin users in the early 1900s would collect (often steal) and sell scrap metal to pay for their heroin.

How come we never hear about anything else Lord Voldemort did except supposedly killing Harry Potter’s parents? #mysterytome

Day 12: I haven’t eaten apple in almost two weeks. The doctors are slowly getting thru the barricade. It won’t be long now. Tell my family I love them…

The song Fly Me to the Moon was the first music ever played on the Moon, when Buzz Aldrin played it on a cassette tape.

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