November 3 in History

Panama declared independence from Colombia on November 3, 1903, in a revolution engineered by the United States. Washington wanted to build a canal through the isthmus, but Colombia's senate rejected the proposed treaty terms. Roosevelt's administration encouraged Panamanian separatists and positioned the USS Nashville off the coast to prevent Colombian troops from suppressing the revolt. The entire revolution took one day. No one was killed except a Chinese shopkeeper and a donkey hit by naval gunfire. Panama signed a canal treaty with the U.S. two weeks later, granting America a ten-mile-wide Canal Zone 'in perpetuity' for $10 million plus annual rent. Roosevelt later boasted 'I took the Canal Zone.' Colombia received $25 million in compensation from the U.S. in 1921, a tacit admission that the whole affair had been heavy-handed.

Soviet engineers strapped Laika into Sputnik 2 and launched her into orbit, knowing the technology to bring her home did not yet exist. Her death from overheating within hours provided the first concrete data on how living organisms react to spaceflight environments, proving that survival was possible despite the lethal conditions. This sacrifice forced a reckoning in the scientific community, accelerating the development of life-support systems that would eventually carry humans into the cosmos.

The Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa revealed on November 3, 1986, that the United States had been secretly selling weapons to Iran, a country under an American arms embargo, in exchange for the release of American hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon. The story got worse: proceeds from the arms sales were being funneled to Contra rebels fighting the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, in direct violation of the Boland Amendment, which Congress had passed to ban such aid. National Security Council staffer Oliver North had orchestrated the scheme. Attorney General Edwin Meese revealed the diversion on November 25. Reagan claimed he knew nothing. Fourteen administration officials were indicted. North and National Security Advisor John Poindexter were convicted but had their sentences reversed on appeal.

Olympe de Gouges was guillotined in Paris on November 3, 1793, for the crime of opposing the Reign of Terror. She had written the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen in 1791, directly challenging the Revolution's exclusion of women from its promises of liberty and equality. Article 10 stated: 'Woman has the right to mount the scaffold; she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum.' The Revolution granted her the first right and denied her the second. De Gouges also opposed slavery, advocated for divorce rights, and suggested a voluntary tax on the wealthy. Robespierre considered her dangerous not because she was wrong but because she was right in ways the revolution wasn't prepared to admit. She was largely forgotten until the feminist movements of the twentieth century reclaimed her.

Toho Studios released Godzilla on November 3, 1954, just nine years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and seven months after the Lucky Dragon 5 incident, in which a Japanese fishing boat was contaminated by American hydrogen bomb fallout at Bikini Atoll. Director Ishiro Honda created a monster awakened and mutated by nuclear testing as a direct metaphor for Japanese nuclear trauma. The original film was dark and serious: Godzilla was not a hero but a terrifying force of destruction. Japanese audiences saw their own cities destroyed again, this time on screen. The film earned $2.25 million domestically, was recut with added Raymond Burr footage for American release, and spawned over 30 sequels across seven decades. The franchise defined the kaiju genre and became Japan's most recognizable cultural export.

Dick Cheney served as Secretary of Defense during the Gulf War, when he oversaw the first large-scale American military operation in the Middle East since Vietnam. He was then CEO of Halliburton. Then Vice President during September 11. He pushed for the Iraq War, the NSA surveillance program, and the use of waterboarding at CIA black sites. Born in 1941 in Lincoln, Nebraska, he had five draft deferments during Vietnam and a heart transplant at 71. He died in 2025.