The Advanced Virgo and Advanced LIGO interferometers performed a joint observation of the gravitational-wave universe between April 2019 and March 2020, concluding their third observing run. Thanks to significant advances both in terms of detector performance and data analysis methods, the third run reached the largest sensitivity to gravitational waves to date. During the run, 56 gravitational-wave candidates were publicly released within hours of detection. Several such candidates have been associated with remarkable objects, ranging from surprisingly massive neutron stars to intermediate-mass black holes. I will review the public results from the first half of the run, focusing on the « exceptional » compact binary mergers GW190412, GW190425, GW190521 and GW190814 and on the updated properties of the population of compact binaries observed so far.