On Sept. 3, 1976, the unmanned U.S. spacecraft Viking 2 landed on Mars to take the first close-up, color photographs of the planet’s surface. (Go to article.)

1189 England’s King Richard I (the Lion-Hearted) was crowned in Westminster.

1658 Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, died.

1783 The Treaty of Paris between the United States and Great Britain officially ended the Revolutionary War.

1929 The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 381.17, it’s pre-Crash high.

1939 Britain and France declared war on Germany, two days after the Nazi invasion of Poland.

1967 Nguyen Van Thieu was elected president of South Vietnam under a new constitution.

1970 Hall of Fame football coach Vince Lombardi died at age 57.

1976 The unmanned U.S. spacecraft Viking 2 landed on Mars to take the first close-up, color photographs of the planet’s surface.

1978 Pope John Paul I was installed as the 264th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.

1994 China and Russia pledged they would no longer target nuclear missiles at or use force against each other.

1997 Arizona Gov. Fife Symington was convicted of lying to get millions in loans to shore up his collapsing real estate empire. (The conviction was overturned in 1999.)

2004 A three-day hostage siege at a school in Beslan, Russia, ended in bloody chaos after Chechen militants set off bombs and Russian commandos stormed the building; more than 330 people were killed, most of them children.

2004 Former President Bill Clinton was hospitalized in New York with chest pains and shortness of breath; he later underwent heart bypass surgery.

2005 President George W. Bush ordered more than 7,000 active duty forces to the Gulf Coast as his administration intensified efforts to send aid to the hurricane-ravaged region in the face of criticism it did not act quickly enough.

2005 Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died at age 80.

2006 Tennis player Andre Agassi retired after losing his third-round match at the U.S. Open.

Source: NY Times