Date with History: September 3

Chamberlain tells Britain it is at war, and a moldy petri dish hands Fleming penicillin.

One paperback for one calendar date: what happened on September 3, and who was born on it.

What happened on September 3

1939: Britain and France declare war on Nazi Germany

Two days after Hitler invaded Poland, Neville Chamberlain's voice crackled over British radio sets: "This country is at war with Germany." The man who had promised peace for our time a year earlier now had to tell his nation the opposite. Within hours a German U-boat torpedoed the passenger ship Athenia, killing 117 people including 28 Americans.

1928: Fleming returns from holiday to find penicillin

Alexander Fleming came back to his St. Mary's Hospital lab after a two-week break to find a stack of petri dishes he had left on the bench, one of them contaminated by a Penicillium mold with a clear ring of dead Staphylococcus around it. He named the substance penicillin and published in 1929, but it took Howard Florey, Ernst Boris Chain, and a world war to work out mass production. All three shared the 1945 Nobel Prize.

Famous birthdays on September 3

1875 — Ferdinand Porsche
Designed electric cars in the 1890s, the first hybrid in 1900, and later the Volkswagen Beetle.

1965 — Charlie Sheen
Platoon and Wall Street actor turned TV's highest paid star, then its most public cautionary tale.

Nearby dates

September 2 · September 4 · All September dates

Part of Date with History, a 366-book collection with one book for every date of the year. 5″×8″ paperback, cream paper.

Historical selections are editorially researched. This is a date-specific book, not a personalized or custom-made product.