December 3: Feast day of St. Francis Xavier

• 1854 - Miners at Eureka Stockade clashed violently with the police and the military in Ballarat, Victoria in Australia.
• 1937 - Issue 1 of The Dandy, the world's longest running comic, went on sale.
• 1967 - A team led by Christiaan Barnard at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa performed the first successful human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky.
• 1984 - Bhopal gas disaster: The accidental release of methyl isocyanate over Bhopal, India resulted in at least 18,000 deaths in one of the world's worst industrial disasters.
• 1999 - The Mars Polar Lander (pictured) reached Mars and disappeared.

Recent days: December 2 – December 1 – November 30