Tuesday, April 3, 2018

TODAY IN HISTORY ― APRIL 3

April 3 is the 93rd day of the year (94th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 272 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Friday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Wednesday or Thursday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Monday or Saturday (56). 

NATIONAL PARTY DAY (COMRADE)

1860 – The first successful United States Pony Express (officially, the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company) run from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, begins. In spite of it's fame, the Pony Express ran for only 18 months, being overcome by the telegraph.

1865 – American Civil War: Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America.

1885 – Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for his internal-combustion engine design. 


1922 – Joseph Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili) becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 


1936 – Bruno Richard Hauptmann is executed for the kidnapping and death of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., the baby son of pilot Charles Lindbergh.

1948 – United States President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries. 


1968 – Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech. 


1973 – Martin Cooper of Motorola makes the first handheld mobile phone call (known as "the brick") to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs. 


1974 – The 1974 Super Outbreak occurs, the second biggest tornado outbreak (148 with 30 F4/F5) in recorded history (after the 2011 Super Outbreak ― 361). The death toll was 315, with nearly 5,500 injured. We were in the middle of it living in Lexington, KY at the time.


1981 – The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, is unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.  It weighed 24.7 pounds, had a whopping 64 KB of RAM, and cost $1800.

1996 – Suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski is captured at his Montana cabin in the United States. 

2004 – Islamic terrorists involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombings are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves. 


2007 – Conventional-Train World Speed Record: A French TGV train on the LGV Est high speed line sets an official new world speed record. 


2016 – The Panama Papers, a leak of legal documents, reveals information on 214,488 offshore companies.



BORN TODAY

1715 – William Watson, English physician, physicist, and botanist (d. 1787)

1783 – Washington Irving, American short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian (d. 1859)

1823 – William M. "Boss" Tweed, American politician (d. 1878)

1898 – Henry Luce, American publisher, co-founded Time Magazine (d. 1967)

1920 – John Demjanjuk (born Ivan Mykolaiovych Demianiuk), Ukrainian Nazi war criminal (d. 2012)

1929 – Fazlur Khan, Bangladeshi engineer and architect, co-designed the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) and John Hancock Center (d. 1982)

1953 – Sandra Boynton, American author and illustrator

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.

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