Reuters
Following are some of the major events to have occurred on September 3:
1914 - Cardinal Giacomo Della Chiesa was elected Pope, becoming Benedict XV.
1925 - The U.S. dirigible Shenandoah, the first airship to use helium gas, ran into a storm over southern Ohio and broke up in the air with the loss of 14 officers and men.
1976 - The U.S. spacecraft Viking 2 landed on Mars and began sending back photographs.
1993 - Cambodia's government agreed to a constitutional monarchy with Norodom Sihanouk returning to the throne.
1994 - Russia and China ended decades of confrontation and agreed to cease keeping nuclear missiles aimed at each other.
1997 - A Vietnam Airlines Tupolev Tu-134 plane crashed while coming in to land at Phnom Penh airport; 64 people died.
2000 - Pope John Paul beatified the ultra-conservative 19th century pope Pius IX, putting him on the path to sainthood despite protests from Jews and liberal Catholics. He also beatified Pope John XXIII, a popular moderniser.
2001 - The United States and Israel angrily pulled out of the U.N. racism conference in Durban in protest at attempts to single out Israel as a racist state.
2003 - The world's first amphibian vehicle is demonstrated in London.
2006 – Tennis player Andre Agassi plays his last U.S. Open.
2007 - Briton Jane Tomlinson, hailed as an inspiration for defying terminal cancer to run marathons, cycle across America and raise over a million pounds for charity, died at the age of 43.
