Explore 3 March

Apollo 9 lifts off from Kennedy Space Center, 3 March 1969.

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NASA · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Apollo 9 takes the lunar module into space

At 11 in the morning on 3 March 1969 a Saturn V rocket launched Apollo 9 from Kennedy Space Center with James McDivitt, David Scott and Russell Schweickart aboard. It was the first crewed flight of the lunar module, the craft that would land astronauts on the Moon.

In ten days in Earth orbit the crew flew the lunar module on its own, separated it from the command ship and docked again, and Schweickart tested the moonwalk suit on a spacewalk. They splashed down on 13 March, clearing the way for the first landing that July.

Prudent-Louis Leray’s poster for the first production of Carmen, 1875.

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Prudent-Louis Leray (1820-1879); Restored by Adam Cuerden · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Bizet’s Carmen opens to a cool reception

Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen, with a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy after a story by Prosper Mérimée, opened at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875. Critics and audiences found its tale of a free-spirited Spanish woman and the soldier who kills her too daring and too violent for the house.

Bizet died three months later, aged 36, never knowing what the opera would become. Within a few years Carmen was a triumph around the world, and it is now among the most performed operas of all.

The cover portrait of Joseph Cannon from the first issue of Time, 3 March 1923.

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Unknown artist (Time, 3 March 1923) · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

The first issue of Time magazine

Two young Yale graduates, Briton Hadden and Henry Luce, published the first issue of Time on 3 March 1923. It set out to give busy readers the week’s news in short, lively articles, and its first cover showed the retired Speaker of the House of Representatives, Joseph Cannon.

About 12,000 copies of the 32-page first issue were printed. Time became one of the world’s most influential news magazines, known for its red border and its Person of the Year.

Bulgarian National Guards parade in Sofia on Liberation Day, 3 March 2018.

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Ministry of Defence of Bulgaria · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized and cropped for display.

Liberation Day in Bulgaria

Bulgaria’s national day falls on 3 March, the anniversary of the Treaty of San Stefano of 1878, which ended almost five centuries of Ottoman rule and recognised a Bulgarian state. It is marked with parades, wreaths and flags across the country.

The emperor and empress dolls from the top tier of a hina doll display.

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Nesnad · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.

Hinamatsuri, Japan’s Doll Festival

On 3 March Japanese families wish their daughters health and happiness by setting out hina dolls, dressed as the court of a Heian-period emperor and empress, on tiered stands. The custom dates from the Edo period, and the day is celebrated with special foods such as chirashi sushi and clam soup.