Skyscraper Day is held annually on September 3. Celebrate this unofficial holiday by climbing or taking the elevator/lift up a skyscraper and by acknowledging the architectural and engineering feats that make such buildings possible.

1189 – England’s King Richard I was crowned in Westminster.

1783 – The Revolutionary War between the U.S. and Great Britain ended with the Treaty of Paris. 

1833 – The first successful penny newspaper in the U.S., “The New York Sun,” was launched by Benjamin H. Day.

1838 – Frederick Douglass boarded a train in Maryland on his way to freedom from being a slave. 

1895 – The first professional football game was played in Latrobe, PA. The Latrobe YMCA defeated the Jeannette Athletic Club 12-0.

1935 – Sir Malcolm Campbell became the first person to drive an automobile over 300 miles an hour. He reached 304.331 MPH on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

1939 – British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, in a radio broadcast, announced that Britain and France had declared war on Germany. Germany had invaded Poland on September 1.

1943 – Italy was invaded by the Allied forces during World War II.

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

1967 – In Sweden, motorists stopped driving on the left side of the road and began driving on the right side.

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

1981 – Egypt arrested more than 1,500 opponents of the government.

1984 – Bruce Sutter (St. Louis Cardinals) set a National League record by earning his 38th save of the season.

1986 – Peat Marwick International and Klynveld Main Goerdeler of the Netherlands agreed to merge and form the world’s largest accounting firm.

1989 – The U.S. began shipping military aircraft and weapons, worth $65 million, to Columbia in its fight against drug lords.

1994 – Russia and China announced that they would no longer be targeting nuclear missiles or using force against each other.

1999 – Mario Lemieux’s ownership group officially took over the National Hockey League‘s Pittsburgh Penguins. Lemieux became the first player in the modern era of sports to buy the team he had once played for.

2013 – Hunters in Mississippi caught a 727-pound alligator.