What happened on October 3
All 5 specimens from this file, spanning 1226 to 1990, with the story behind each photograph.
Reveal the full answer key
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A daily children's variety show starts on television with a cast of child performers
The Mickey Mouse Club began on 3 October 1955 and ran every weekday afternoon. Annette Funicello, who got the most fan mail of any of them, had been spotted by Walt Disney at a school dance recital. The ears were made of felt and cost about a dollar, and the show sold them by the million.
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Two countries divided for forty-one years become one again
East and West Germany became one country at midnight on 3 October 1990, less than eleven months after the Berlin Wall was opened. The east did not join as an equal partner. It acceded to the west's existing constitution, which is why the country kept the same name, flag and capital city arrangements it already had.
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A friar who gave away his inheritance dies in the hut he asked to be carried to
Francis of Assisi died on the evening of 3 October 1226, aged about 44. He was the son of a rich cloth merchant and had stripped in the town square years earlier to hand his father back everything he owned. At the end he asked to be laid on the bare ground. He was made a saint less than two years later.
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A president fixes a national day of thanksgiving in the middle of a civil war
Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving on 3 October 1863, three months after Gettysburg. The idea was pressed on him for years by Sarah Josepha Hale, the magazine editor who also wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb. She had written to four presidents before one of them agreed.
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An empire invades one of the last independent countries in Africa
Italy invaded Ethiopia on 3 October 1935 without a declaration of war. Haile Selassie went to the League of Nations in Geneva the following year and warned that if it did nothing, the same thing would happen to other small countries. The League imposed sanctions that excluded oil, and the invasion succeeded.