January 28 » Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent, becomes the first person to be convicted of speeding. He was fined one shilling, plus costs, for speeding at 8mph (13km/h), thereby exceeding the contemporary speed limit of 2mph (3.2km/h).
February 1 » La bohème premieres in Turin at the Teatro Regio (Turin), conducted by the young Arturo Toscanini.
March 1 » Battle of Adwa: An Ethiopian army defeats an outnumbered Italian force, ending the First Italo-Ethiopian War.
August 27 » Anglo-Zanzibar War: The shortest war in world history (09:02 to 09:40), between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar.
November 17 » The Western Pennsylvania Hockey League, which later became the first ice hockey league to openly trade and hire players, began play at Pittsburgh's Schenley Park Casino.
December 30 » Canadian ice hockey player Ernie McLea scores the first hat-trick in Stanley Cup play, and the Cup-winning goal as the Montreal Victorias defeat the Winnipeg Victorias 6–5.
Day of death September 3, 1978
The temperature on September 3, 1978 was between 10.0 °C and 17.2 °C and averaged 13.8 °C. There was 1.3 mm of rain during 0.3 hours. There was 7.9 hours of sunshine (58%). The partly or heavily clouded was. The average windspeed was 2 Bft (weak wind) and was prevailing from the west-northwest. Source: KNMI
In The Netherlands , there was from Monday, December 19, 1977 to Friday, September 11, 1981 the cabinet Van Agt I, with Mr. A.A.M. van Agt (CDA/KVP) as prime minister.
February 24 » The Yuba County Five disappear in California. Four of their bodies are found four months later.
May 3 » The first unsolicited bulk commercial email (which would later become known as "spam") is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
July 30 » The 730: Okinawa Prefecture changes its traffic on the right-hand side of the road to the left-hand side.
August 10 » Three members of the Ulrich family are killed in an accident. This leads to the Ford Pinto litigation.
September 19 » The Solomon Islands join the United Nations.
November 3 » Dominica gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Hendrik Dreyer, "Dreyer Tree", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/dreyer-tree/I12377.php : accessed January 26, 2026), "James Richard Barry (1896-1978)".
Copy warning
Genealogical publications are copyright protected. Although data is often retrieved from public archives, the searching, interpreting, collecting, selecting and sorting of the data results in a unique product. Copyright protected work may not simply be copied or republished.
Please stick to the following rules
Request permission to copy data or at least inform the author, chances are that the author gives permission, often the contact also leads to more exchange of data.
Do not use this data until you have checked it, preferably at the source (the archives).
State from whom you have copied the data and ideally also his/her original source.