Today in History in 1863 Thanksgiving Day is declared as the last Thursday in November by President Abraham Lincoln; in 1955 The Mickey Mouse Club is first shown on the American Broadcasting Company; in 1960 The Andy Griffith Show starts; and in 1961 The Dick Van Dyke Show is first shown on CBS-TV.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

October 3 is the 276th day of the year (277th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 89 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

2333 BC – Famous date of the establishment of the Kingdom of Chosun (Korea).

52 BC – Vercingetorix, leader of the Gauls, surrenders to the Romans under Julius Caesar, ending the siege and Battle of Alesia.

42 BC – First Battle of Philippi: The Triumvirs Mark Antony and Octavian fight a battle with Caesar's assassins Brutus and Cassius. Even though Brutus defeats Octavian, Antony defeats Cassius.

382 – Emperor Theodosius I concludes a peace treaty with the Goths and settles them in the Balkans in exchange for military service.

1283 – Dafydd ap Gruffydd, prince of Gwynedd in Wales, becomes the first person executed by drawing and quartering.

1574 – The Siege of Leiden lifted by the Watergeuzen – foundation of the first Dutch university.

1683 – The Qing Dynasty naval commander Shi Lang reaches Taiwan.

1712 – The Duke of Montrose issues a warrant for the arrest of Rob Roy MacGregor.

1739 – The Treaty of Nissa is signed by the Ottoman Empire and Russia at the end of the Russian-Turkish War, 1736-1739.

1762 – Catherine II of Russia is crowned.

1778 – Captain James Cook anchors in Alaska.

1789 – George Washington names the first Thanksgiving Day.

1835 – The Staedtler Company is founded in Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany.

1849 – American author Edgar Allan Poe is found delirious (a terribly confused state of mind) in a gutter in Baltimore, Maryland under mysterious circumstances.

1863 – Thanksgiving Day declared as the last Thursday in November by President Abraham Lincoln.

1866 – American passenger steamer Evening Star sinks in hurricane-force winds, 180 nautical miles off Tybee Island, Georgia, US, killing 148 people.

1884 – In Denmark, Christiansborg Castle is destroyed by fire.

1901 – 2000

1904 – The Nama War begins as Namibian independence activist Hendrik Witbooi declares war on the colonial power, Germany.

1918 – Boris III of Bulgaria becomes King.

1919 – Cincinnati Reds pitcher Adolfo Luque becomes the first Hispanic American baseball player in the World Series.

1929 – The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes is renamed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia, "Land of the South Slavs".

1932 – Iraq gets its independence.

1935 – Italy invades Ethiopia under General de Bono (replaced November 11 by Pietro Badoglio).

1942 – First successful launch of A4-rocket from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde, Germany. The rocket flew 147 kilometres wide and got to a height of 84.5 kilometres and was the first man-made object reaching space.

1949 – WERD, the first black-owned radio station in the United States, opens in Atlanta, Georgia.

1950 – Korean War: The First Battle of Maryang San, primarily pitting Australian and British forces against Communist China, begins.

1951 – New York Giants beat the Brooklyn Dodgers 5-4, winning the National League pennant, with Bobby Thomson's three-run homer called "The Shot Heard 'Round the World".

1952 – The United Kingdom successfully tests a nuclear weapon.

1955 – The Mickey Mouse Club is first shown on the American Broadcasting Company.

1957 – Willy Brandt, future-German Chancellor, is elected as Governing Mayor of West Berlin, after the death of Otto Suhr.

1960 – The Andy Griffith Show starts.

1961 – The Dick Van Dyke Show is first shown on CBS-TV.

1962 – At Cape Canaveral the Mercury 8 takes off with Astronaut Wally Schirra on it for a nine-hour flight.

1963 – A violent coup in Honduras starts two decades of military rule.

1964 – Underdog debuts on CBS.

1965 – Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Immigration and Naturalization Service Act of 1965 into law, making immigration rules easier for people coming to the United States.

1969 – Berlin's television tower opens.

1974 – Peru is struck by an earthquake, killing 83 people.

1979 – The divorce of Michele Catain, an American crew member and real estate agent, and David Thomas Durboraw, an American businessman, is finalized.

1981 – The Hunger Strike by Irish Republican Army prisoners at the Maze jail in Belfast ends after seven months and 10 deaths.

1982 – Changtse mountain in Tibet is climbed for the first time, by Dutch climber Johan Taks.

1985 – The Space Shuttle Atlantis makes its first flight.

1990 – German reunification: East Germany ends, after merging with the Federal Republic of Germany and joining the European Economic Community.

1993 – Battle of Mogadishu: In an attempt to capture officials of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid's organization in Mogadishu, Somalia, 18 US Army Rangers and about 2000 Somalis are killed. US forces withdraw from Somalia soon after.

1995 – O. J. Simpson is found not guilty of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

1997 – The first cloned rodent, a mouse named Cumulina, is born in Honolulu, Hawaii.

2004 – The Montreal Expos play their last Major League Baseball game before the franchise is moved to Washington, D.C..

2005 – The EU starts entry negotiations with Turkey and Croatia.

2010 – In Delhi, India, the 2010 Commonwealth Games begin.

2011 – The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is given to Bruce Beutler, Jules A. Hoffmann and Ralph M. Steinman. Unknown to the Nobel Committee, Steinman had died three days earlier and becomes only the third-ever posthumous (after death) Nobel laureate in history, as of the announcement date.

2011 – Helle Thorning-Schmidt becomes Prime Minister of Denmark.

2013 – A boat travelling from North Africa, carrying migrants from the East African countries of Eritrea and Somalia, catches fire and sinks off the Italian Mediterranean Sea island of Lampedusa, killing 134 people, with many more feared dead.

2013 – The Gambia withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations, through a decision made by its President, Yahya Jammeh.

2015 – At least 42 people are killed in an airstrike on a hospital, operated by Médecins Sans Frontières, in the Kunduz region of Afghanistan.

2017 – Barry Barish, Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss win the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of gravitational waves.