August 3 is:
National Watermelon Day
435 – Deposed Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, considered the originator of Nestorianism, was exiled by Roman Emperor Theodosius II to a monastery in Egypt.
From Theopedia:
Nestorianism is basically the doctrine that Jesus existed as two persons, the man Jesus and the divine Son of God, rather than as a unified person. This doctrine is identified with Nestorius (c.386-451), Patriarch of Constantinople, although he himself denied holding this belief. This view of Christ was condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431, and the conflict over this view led to the Nestorian schism, separating the Assyrian Church of the East from the Byzantine Church.
The motivation for this view was an aversion to the idea that “God” suffered and died on the cross, be it the divinity itself, the Trinity, or one of the persons of the Trinity. Thus, they would say, Jesus the perfect man suffered and died, not the divine second person of the Trinity, for such is an impossible thought — hence the inference that two “persons” essentially inhabited the one body of Jesus. Nestorius himself argued against calling Mary the “Mother of God” (Theotokos) as the church was beginning to do. He held that Mary was the mother of Christ only in respect to His humanity. The council at Ephesus (431) accused Nestorius of the heresy of teaching “two persons” in Christ and insisted that Theotokos was an appropriate title for Mary.
The problem with Nestorianism is that it threatens the atonement. If Jesus is two persons, then which one died on the cross? If it was the “human person” then the atonement is not of divine quality and thereby insufficient to cleanse us of our sins.
881 – Battle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu: Louis III of France defeated the Vikings, an event celebrated in Ludwigslied, a Old High German poem of 59 rhyming couplets.
Christopher Columbus set sail on his first voyage on August 3, 1492 with three ships: the Santa María ex-Gallega (“Galician”), the Pinta (“The Pint”, “The Look”, or “The Spotted One”) and the Santa Clara, nicknamed the Niña (“Girl”) after her owner Juan Niño. The Bahamas were spotted October 12th.
1678 – Robert LaSalle built Le Griffon, the first known ship to be built on the Great Lakes.
Birthday of Elisha Graves Otis (August 3, 1811), American inventor of a safety device that prevents elevators from falling if the hoisting cable fails. The 1854 New York World’s Fair offered a great chance at publicity. At the New York Crystal Palace, Elisha Otis amazed a crowd when he ordered the only rope holding the platform on which he was standing cut. The rope was severed by an axeman, and the platform fell only a few inches before coming to a halt. The brake he invented used toothed guiderails in the elevator shaft and a spring-loaded bar that automatically caught in the toothed rail if the elevator car if the cable failed. After the World’s Fair, Otis received continuous orders, doubling each year.
Birthday of Ernest (Ernie) Taylor Pyle (Aug 3, 1900), American journalist and spokesman of the American soldier; the most famous American correspondent in World War II.
In 1923, Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as the 30th president of the United States, one day after President Warren G. Harding died of a heart attack.