1988: Bavarian Premier Franz Josef Strauss, one of the founders of the West German state who at various times held four different cabinet posts, died in a hospital after he collapsed while on a hunting party at the estate of a German prince. A medical bulletin issued in a Regenburg hospital said “circulatory collapse” affected his lungs and kidneys and the immediate cause of death was heart failure. Strauss, 73, was the powerful head of the Bavarian branch of the ruling Christian Democrats. He was elected a member of the first Bonn parliament and under Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s first Chancellor, became minister for special affairs, atomic affairs minister, and defence minister. He later became finance minister from 1966 to 1969 in the Christian Democratic Social Democratic “grand” coalition.
Other major events on October 3
1929 Name of Serbo-Croat-Slovene kingdom is changed to Yugoslavia.
1932 Iraq joins League of Nations as British mandate ends.
1952 Britain conducts its first atomic bomb test off the coast of Australia.
1981 Ali Khamenei wins Iran’s presidential elections by a landslide.
1988 Indian hostage Mithileshwar Singh is freed in Beirut after 20 months of captivity.
1990 East and West Germany merge to become Germany.
1993 Russian President Boris Yeltsin declares a state of emergency.
1994 Jordan and Israel sign peace agreement.
1996 US, Britain, China, France and Russia sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
1998 10,000 Turkish soldiers cross into northern Iraq to attack Kurdish rebels.
2003 Pakistan test-fires nuclear capable Hatf-III missile.
2005 India, Pakistan sign pact on missile tests.
2006 Europe’s first lunar mission crash lands on moon.
2008 OJ Simpson is found guilty of armed robbery and kidnapping.
2013 Former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav sentenced to spend five years in jail in the fodder scam case.
2014 Nine United Nations peacekeepers from Niger are killed in northeastern Mali.
2015 Former British Defence Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Healey dies.
2017 Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani dies.
