Daily List

Today in History, June 3rd

On June 3, 1965, Ed White became the first American to walk in space. Plus Cold Harbor and the Duke of Windsor's wedding.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published June 3, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

June 3 is best known for 1965, when Ed White stepped out of Gemini 4 and became the first American to walk in space. The date also marks the bloody Union assault at Cold Harbor in 1864 and the wedding of the former King Edward VIII to Wallis Simpson in 1937.

The big story: Ed White becomes the first American to walk in space (1965)

The Soviets got there first. Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov floated outside his spacecraft on March 18, 1965. Less than three months later, on June 3, Gemini 4 lifted off from Cape Canaveral with command pilot James McDivitt and pilot Edward White aboard. That afternoon, about 120 miles above Earth, White opened the hatch and pushed off into space. He was tied to the capsule by a 25-foot tether and steered with a hand-held gun that squirted gas for thrust. The gun’s fuel ran out in about three minutes. He stayed outside a little over 20 minutes, and getting back in turned out to be the hard part: the crew struggled to seal the hatch. Gemini 4 landed on June 7 after four days in orbit. Flights like it gave NASA data on longer missions and taught astronauts the rendezvous and docking skills the Apollo moon landings would need.

More events on June 3

Year	What happened
1754	Twenty-two-year-old George Washington began building Fort Necessity in western Pennsylvania, bracing for a French counterattack after the Jumonville skirmish.
1800	John Adams arrived in the half-built city of Washington, D.C., the first president to come to the new capital. He moved into the executive mansion that November.
1864	Ulysses S. Grant sent Union troops in a frontal assault on Robert E. Lee’s entrenched lines at Cold Harbor, Virginia. About 7,000 Union soldiers fell, most in under an hour.
1916	President Woodrow Wilson signed the National Defense Act, expanding the National Guard and creating the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).
1937	The Duke of Windsor, who had given up the British throne as Edward VIII, married American divorcée Wallis Simpson at a château in France’s Loire Valley.
1940	German bombers struck Paris, killing 254 people, most of them civilians, as the Dunkirk evacuation neared its end and France neared collapse.
1943	The Zoot Suit Riots began in Los Angeles as U.S. servicemen attacked young Mexican Americans and others. A state committee later named racism as the central cause.
2017	Attackers drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge and stabbed people in nearby Borough Market, killing eight before police shot them.

Born on June 3

1808: Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, born in Christian County, Kentucky.
1926: Allen Ginsberg, Beat poet best known for Howl, born in Newark, New Jersey.
1936: Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove and The Last Picture Show, born in Wichita Falls, Texas.