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FILE NO. 09.03 5 specimens · est. 1658-1976

What happened on September 3?

Real photographs, all filed under this date. Name each event before you read on.
Case Timeline 1658-1976 · 318 years
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What happened on September 3

All 5 specimens from this file, spanning 1658 to 1976, with the story behind each photograph.

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  1. Unfinished oil painting of five eighteenth century diplomats in wigs and coats grouped around a table, the right side of the canvas left blank.
    History · 1783

    A treaty in Paris formally ends the American Revolutionary War

    The Treaty of Paris recognised American independence and set the new nation's borders. The painting was abandoned unfinished because the British delegation refused to sit for it.

  2. Oil portrait of a stern man with shoulder length hair, wearing a white collar over polished steel armour.
    Politics · 1658

    Oliver Cromwell dies, and the English republic dies with him

    Cromwell died on the anniversary of two of his greatest victories, Dunbar and Worcester. His son Richard proved unable to hold the Protectorate together and the monarchy was restored within two years.

  3. Black and white aerial photograph of a city street jammed with cars, buses and enormous crowds of onlookers.
    Culture · 1967

    An entire country switches which side of the road it drives on

    On Dagen H, Sweden switched from driving on the left to the right at 5am. Some 360,000 road signs were changed overnight, and despite 83 per cent of Swedes opposing the change, the day passed with no fatalities.

  4. Colour photograph of a rocky reddish plain scattered with boulders and patches of white frost, under a pale sky.
    Space · 1976

    A lander touches down on Mars and starts sending back pictures

    Viking 2 landed at Utopia Planitia and operated for over three years. It returned the first images showing water frost forming on the Martian surface, visible as the white patches between the rocks.

  5. Black and white photograph of an older man in a white coat seated at a cluttered laboratory bench examining a small dish.
    Science · 1928

    Fleming returns from holiday to find a mould has killed his bacteria

    Alexander Fleming came back to his untidy lab at St Mary's and noticed a contaminated culture plate where mould had wiped out the staphylococci around it. That accident became penicillin, and antibiotics with it.