Historical timeline for February 3

Islamist militants massacred at least 162 while injuring and kidnapping dozens in two villages in Kwara State, Nigeria.

Ohio train derailment: A freight train containing vinyl chloride and other hazardous materials derails and burns in East Palestine, Ohio, United States, releasing hydrogen chloride and phosgene into the air and contaminating the Ohio River.

A school shooting in Moscow, Russia leaves two people dead and one wounded.

A Baghdad market bombing kills at least 135 people and injures a further 339.

One hundred five people are killed when Kam Air Flight 904 crashes in the Pamir Mountains in Afghanistan.

Cavalese cable car disaster: A United States military pilot causes the death of 20 people when his low-flying plane cuts the cable of a cable-car near Trento, Italy.

Astronaut Eileen Collins becomes the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle as mission STS-63 gets underway from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Space Shuttle program: STS-60 is launched, carrying Sergei Krikalev, the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard the Shuttle.

After a stroke two weeks previously, South African President P. W. Botha resigns as leader of the National Party, but stays on as president for six more months.

A military coup overthrows Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay since 1954.

Doctor John Buster and a research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in the United States announce history's first embryo transfer, from one woman to another resulting in a live birth.

Space Shuttle program: STS-41-B is launched using Space Shuttle Challenger.

The first day of the seven-day 1972 Iran blizzard, which would kill at least 4,000 people, making it the deadliest snowstorm in history.

New York Police Officer Frank Serpico is shot during a drug bust in Brooklyn and survives to later testify against police corruption.

The Soviet Union's Luna 9 becomes the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the Moon, and the first spacecraft to take pictures from the surface of the Moon.

The United States Air Force begins Operation Looking Glass, and over the next 30 years, a "Doomsday Plane" is always in the air, with the capability of taking direct control of the United States' bombers and missiles in the event of the destruction of the SAC's command post.

British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan speaks of "a wind of change", signalling that his Government is likely to support decolonisation.

Rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson are killed in a plane crash along with the pilot near Clear Lake, Iowa, an event later known as The Day the Music Died.

Sixty-five people are killed when American Airlines Flight 320 crashes into the East River on approach to LaGuardia Airport in New York City.

Founding of the Benelux Economic Union, creating a testing ground for a later European Economic Community.