Several events occurred on this day of the Jewish calendar:
Joshua stops the sun
On the third day of Tammuz in the year 2488 from creation (1273 BCE), Joshua was leading the Jewish people in one of the battles for the conquest of the Land of Israel. Victory was imminent, but the sun was already setting. "Sun," Joshua proclaimed, "be silent over Givon; moon, over the Valley of Aialon" (Joshua 10:12). The celestial bodies fell silent, halting their progress across the sky until the army of the Jewish people finished the battle.
Arrest and Release
The sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson (1880-1950), who was arrested on the 15th of Sivan in 1927 by the Russian secret police for his intense work to preserve and disseminate Judaism in the former Soviet Union, was informed that he would be sent into exile for three years in the city of Kastrama.
Initially sentenced to death, international pressure led the Soviet regime to change his sentence to ten years of hard labor in Siberia, then three years of exile in Kastrama (the third of Tamuz) and then full release on the 12th of Tamuz.
Anniversary of Death
In the early hours of the 3rd of Tammuz 5754 (June 12, 1994), the soul of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (b. 1902), ascended to the World of Truth.
It is an auspicious day to reflect on our connection with the Rebbe, the spiritual leader of our generation, and to renew it by making good resolutions in the study of Torah and the observance of Mitzvot, and in particular, in the study of the Rebbe's teachings.
Thank you so much for the information. I didn't know that date was so important. I knew about the 17th of Tammuz, the one about the golden calf and the tablets.
I was born on the 3rd of Tammuz. Well, I'm confused, I don't know if it's the 3rd or the 4th, because I was born at 10 pm at sunset.
Greetings and a big hug, Jose, from Murcia, Spain.