http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
Apr 3, 1860: Pony Express debuts
On this day in 1860, the first Pony Express mail, traveling by horse and rider relay teams, simultaneously leaves St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. Ten days later, on April 13, the westbound rider and mail packet completed the approximately 1,800-mile journey and arrived in Sacramento, beating the eastbound packet's arrival in St. Joseph by two days and setting a new standard for speedy mail delivery. Although ultimately short-lived and unprofitable, the Pony Express captivated America's imagination and helped win federal aid for a more economical overland postal system. It also contributed to the economy of the towns on its route and served the mail-service needs of the American West in the days before the telegraph or an efficient transcontinental railroad.
The Pony Express debuted at a time before radios and telephones, when California, which achieved statehood in 1850, was still largely cut off from the eastern part of the country. Letters sent from New York to the West Coast traveled by ship, which typically took at least a month, or by stagecoach on the recently established Butterfield Express overland route, which could take from three weeks to many months to arrive. Compared to the snail's pace of the existing delivery methods, the Pony Express' average delivery time of 10 days seemed like lightning speed.
The Pony Express Company, the brainchild of William H. Russell, William Bradford Waddell and Alexander Majors, owners of a freight business, was set up over 150 relay stations along a pioneer trail across the present-day states of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California. Riders, who were paid approximately $25 per week and carried loads estimated at up to 20 pounds of mail, were changed every 75 to 100 miles, with horses switched out every 10 to 15 miles. Among the riders was the legendary frontiersman and showman William "Buffalo Bill" Cody (1846-1917), who reportedly signed on with the Pony Express at age 14. The company's riders set their fastest time with Lincoln's inaugural address, which was delivered in just less than eight days.
The initial cost of Pony Express delivery was $5 for every half-ounce of mail. The company began as a private enterprise and its owners hoped to gain a profitable delivery contract from the U.S. government, but that never happened. With the advent of the first transcontinental telegraph line in October 1861, the Pony Express ceased operations. However, the legend of the lone Pony Express rider galloping across the Old West frontier to deliver the mail lives on today.
Apr 3, 1865: Confederate capital of Richmond is captured
The Rebel capital of Richmond, Virginia, falls to the Union, the most significant sign that the Confederacy is nearing its final days.
For ten months, General Ulysses S. Grant had tried unsuccessfully to infiltrate the city. After Lee made a desperate attack against Fort Stedman along the Union line on March 25, Grant prepared for a major offensive. He struck at Five Forks on April 1, crushing the end of Lee's line southwest of Petersburg. On April 2, the Yankees struck all along the Petersburg line, and the Confederates collapsed.
On the evening of April 2, the Confederate government fled the city with the army right behind. Now, on the morning of April 3, blue-coated troops entered the capital. Richmond was the holy grail of the Union war effort, the object of four years of campaigning. Tens of thousands of Yankee lives were lost trying to get it, and nearly as many Confederate lives lost trying to defend it.
Now, the Yankees came to take possession of their prize. One resident, Mary Fontaine, wrote, "I saw them unfurl a tiny flag, and I sank on my knees, and the bitter, bitter tears came in a torrent." Another observer wrote that as the Federals rode in, the city's black residents were "completely crazed, they danced and shouted, men hugged each other, and women kissed." Among the first forces into the capital were black troopers from the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry, and the next day President Abraham Lincoln visited the city. For the residents of Richmond, these were symbols of a world turned upside down. It was, one reporter noted, "...too awful to remember, if it were possible to be erased, but that cannot be."
Apr 3, 1948: Truman signs Foreign Assistance Act
President Harry S. Truman signs off on legislation establishing the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948, more popularly known as the Marshall Plan. The act eventually provided over $12 billion of assistance to aid in the economic recovery of Western Europe.
In the first years following the end of World War II, the economies of the various nations of Western Europe limped along. Unemployment was high, money was scarce, and homelessness and starvation were not unknown in the war-ravaged countries. U.S. policymakers considered the situation fraught with danger. In the developing Cold War era, some felt that economic privation in Western Europe made for a fertile breeding ground for communist propaganda.
A key element of America's policy to contain the influence of the Soviet Union was the recovery of Western Germany (Eastern Germany was occupied by Soviet troops), and that recovery required the revitalization of Germany's natural markets in Western Europe. In addition, strengthening the economies of other Western European countries would better equip them to fight the threat of communism, either from Soviet expansion or from domestic communist parties. In June 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall made a dramatic call for a massive economic recovery program, one that would provide billions for the stagnant economies of Western Europe. The result of Marshall's call to action was the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948, which was passed by wide margins in Congress. In signing the act, President Truman declared that it represented "perhaps the greatest venture in constructive statesmanship that any nation has undertaken." Secretary Marshall congratulated Congress for having "faced a great crisis with courage and wisdom."
The act provided an initial grant of $4 billion for Western Europe. By the time the program came to an end in late 1951 over $12 billion had been expended. Although the Marshall Plan was not an absolute success (the large influx of American dollars led to rampant inflation in some areas), it did stabilize and revitalize the economies of Western Europe. British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin declared that it had been "a lifeline to sinking men."
Apr 3, 1996: Unabomber arrested
At his small wilderness cabin near Lincoln, Montana, Theodore John Kaczynski is arrested by FBI agents and accused of being the Unabomber, the elusive terrorist blamed for 16 mail bombs that killed three people and injured 23 during an 18-year period.
Kaczynski, born in Chicago in 1942, won a scholarship to study mathematics at Harvard University at age 16. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, he became a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Although celebrated as a brilliant mathematician, he suffered from persistent social and emotional problems, and in 1969 abruptly ended his promising career at Berkeley. Disillusioned with the world around him, he tried to buy land in the Canadian wilderness but in 1971 settled for a 1.4-acre plot near his brother's home in Montana.
For the next 25 years, Kaczynski lived as a hermit, occasionally working odd jobs and traveling but mostly living off his land. He developed a philosophy of radical environmentalism and militant opposition to modern technology, and tried to get academic essays on the subjects published. It was the rejection of one of his papers by two Chicago-area universities in 1978 that may have prompted him to manufacture and deliver his first mail bomb.
The package was addressed to the University of Illinois from Northwestern University, but was returned to Northwestern, where a security guard was seriously wounded while opening the suspicious package. In 1979, Kaczynski struck again at Northwestern, injuring a student at the Technological Institute. Later that year, his third bomb exploded on an American Airlines flight, causing injuries from smoke inhalation. In 1980, a bomb mailed to the home of Percy Wood, the president of United Airlines, injured Wood when he tried to open it. As Kaczynski seemed to be targeting universities and airlines, federal investigators began calling their suspect the Unabomber, an acronym of sorts for university, airline, and bomber.
From 1981 to 1985, there were seven more bombs, four at universities, one at a professor's home, one at the Boeing Company in Auburn, Wash., and one at a computer store in Sacramento. Six people were injured, and in 1985 the owner of the computer store was killed--the Unabomber's first murder. In 1987, a woman saw a man wearing aviator glasses and a hooded sweatshirt placing what turned out to be a bomb outside a computer store in Salt Lake City. The sketch of the suspect that emerged became the first representation of the Unabomber, and Kaczynski, fearing capture, halted his terrorist campaign for six years.
In June 1993, a lethal mail bomb severely injured a University of California geneticist at his home, and two days later a computer science professor at Yale was badly injured by a similar bomb. Various federal departments established the UNABOM Task Force, which launched an intensive search for a Unabomber suspect. In 1994, a mail bomb killed an advertising executive at his home in New Jersey. Kaczynski had mistakenly thought that the man worked for a firm that repaired the Exxon Company's public relations after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. In April 1995, a bomb killed the president of a timber-industry lobbying group. It was the Unabomber's last attack.
Soon after, Kaczynski sent a manifesto to The New York Times and The Washington Post, saying he would stop the killing if it were published. In 1995, The Washington Post published the so-called "Unabomber's Manifesto," a 35,000-word thesis on what Kaczynski perceived to be the problems with America's industrial and technological society. Kaczynski's brother, David, read the essay and recognized his brother's ideas and language; he informed the FBI in February 1996 that he suspected that his brother was the Unabomber. On April 3, Ted Kaczynski was arrested at his cabin in Montana, and extensive evidence--including a live bomb and an original copy of the manifesto--was discovered at the site.
Indicted on more than a dozen federal charges, he appeared briefly in court in 1996 to plead not guilty to all charges. During the next year and a half, Kaczynski wrangled with his defense attorneys, who wanted to issue an insanity plea against his wishes. Kaczynski wanted to defend what he saw as legitimate political motives in carrying out the attacks, but at the start of the Unabomber trial in January 1998 the judge rejected his requests to acquire a new defense team and represent himself. On January 22, Kaczynski pleaded guilty on all counts and was spared the death penalty. He showed no remorse for his crimes and in May was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years.
Here's a more detailed look at events that transpired on this date throughout history:
419 - [Etalius] ends his reign as Catholic Pope
1043 - Edward the Confessor crowned king of England
1077 - The first Parliament of Friuli is created.
1312 - 2nd council of Vienna
1376 - Battle of Navarrete (Najera), English beat France
1559 - Spain & France signs 2nd Treaty of Le
Cateau-Cambrésis
1582 - French van Valois honored as duke of Gelre/earl of
Zutphen
1645 - English parliament accept Self-Denying Ordinance
1657 - English Lord Protector Cromwell refuses crown
1679 - Edmund Halley meets Johannes Hevelius in Danzig
1721 - Robert Walpole becomes England's 1st Lord of the
Treasury
1764 - Austrian arch duke Jozef crowned himself Roman
Catholic king
1776 - Washington receives honorary Ll.D. degree from
Harvard College
1783 - Sweden & US sign a treaty of Amity & Commerce
1790 - Revenue Marine Service (US Coast Guard), created
1834 - The generals in the Greek War of Independence stand
trial for treason.
1848 - Thomas Douglas becomes 1st SF public teacher
1856 - Gunpowder in church explodes killing 4,000 in Rhodos
1860 - Pony Express began between St Joseph Mo &
Sacramento Calif
1864 - Skirmish at Okolona, Arkansas
1865 - Battle at Namozine Church, Virginia (Appomattox
Campaign)
1865 - Union forces occupy Confederate capital of Richmond
Va & Petersberg
1868 - An Hawaiian surfs on highest wave ever, he rides a
50' tidal wave
1882 - Wood block alarm invented, when alarm rang, it
dropped 20 wood blocks
Outlaw Jesse JamesOutlaw Jesse James 1882 - American Old
West: Outlaw Jesse James is killed by Robert Ford.
1889 - Savings Bank of Order of True Reformers opens in
Richmond, Va
1893 - 1st NSW v Queensland F-C game, at Brisbane Exhibition
Ground
1908 - Frank Gotch wins world heavyweight wrestling
championship in 2 hrs
1910 - Highest mountain in North America, Alaska's Mt
McKinley climbed
1911 - Harry James Smith' "Mrs Bumsted-Leigh,"
premieres in NYC
1913 - British suffragette Emily Pankhurst sentenced to 3
years in jail
1917 - Lenin arrives in Petrograd from Switzerland [NS=April
16]
1917 - Lenin leaves Switzerland for Petrograd
1918 - House of Reps accepts American Creed written by
William Tyler
1919 - Austria expels all Habsburgers
1922 - Stalin appointed General Secretary of Communist Party
1923 - 2 "Black Sox" sue White Sox
(unsuccessfully) for back salary
1925 - Great Britain goes back to gold standard
1925 - Neth & Belgium sign accord of Westerschelde
Soviet Union Premier Joseph StalinSoviet Union Premier
Joseph Stalin 1926 - 1st performance of Jean Sibelius' 7th Symphony in C
1926 - 2nd flight of a liquid-fueled rocket by Robert
Goddard
1926 - Italy establishes corp of force in order to break
powerful unions
1927 - Interstate Commerce Comm transfers Ohio to Eastern
time zone
1929 - Persia agrees to Litvinov Pact
1929 - RMS Queen Mary is ordered from John Brown &
Company Shipbuilding and Engineering by Cunard Line.
1930 - Ras Tafari becomes Emperor Haile Selassie of
Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
1930 - Stanley Cup: Montreal Canadiens sweep Boston Bruins
in 2 games
1930 - 2nd Academy Awards - "The Broadway Melody,"
Warner Baxter & Mary Pickford wins
1933 - 1st airplane flight over Mt Everest
1933 - Then longest North American hockey game requires a
1:44:46 overtime as Maple Leaf Ken Doraty scores to beat Canadiens 1-0
1935 - Yasuo Ikenada runs world record marathon (2:26:44)
1936 - Al Carr KOs Lew Massey on 1 punch, :07 of 1st round
1936 - Shortest boxing bout with gloves lasts only 10
seconds
1941 - Churchill warns Stalin of German invasion
Actress Mary PickfordActress Mary Pickford 1941 - Rasjid
al-Gailani forms pro-German regime in Iraq
1941 - Waltons overture "Scapino," premieres in
Chicago
1943 - Jan Dieters (leader of illegal CPN) arrested
1944 - British dive bombers attack battle cruiser Tirpitz
1944 - Supreme Court (Smith v Allwright) "white
primaries" unconstitutional
1945 - Hengelo freed from nazi control by Canadian army
1945 - Nazi's begin evacuation of camp Buchenwald
1945 - US 1st army conquers Hofgeismar
1946 - Neth-German postal relations resume
1947 - "Barefoot Boy with Cheek" opens at Martin
Beck NYC for 108 perfs
1948 - 1st US figure skating championships held
1948 - Harry Harry Truman signs Marshall Plan ($5B aid to 16
European countries)
1948 - US female Figure Skating championship won by Gretchen
Merrill
1948 - US male Figure Skating championship won by Richard
Button
1949 - KQW-AM in San Francisco CA changes call letters to
KCBS
33rd US President Harry Truman33rd US President Harry Truman
1949 - North Atlantic Treaty, pact signed by US, Britain, France & Canada
1949 - WLWS (now WCMH) TV channel 4 in Columbus, OH (NBC)
begins broadcasting
1951 - Christopher Fry's "Sleep of Prisoners,"
premieres in Oxford
1952 - Dutch Queen Juliana speaks to US Congress
1954 - "Me & Juliet" closes at Majestic
Theater NYC after 358 performances
1954 - Don Perry climbs a 20' rope in under 2.8 seconds (AAU
record)
1955 - Balt Orioles pull their 1st triple play (3-6-2 vs KC
Athletics)
1955 - Fire in cinema to Sclessin Belgium, kills 39
1955 - Louise Suggs wins LPGA Oklahoma City Golf Open
1955 - Night express train in Guadalajara derails, killing
300
1955 - The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will
defend Allen Ginsberg's book Howl against obscenity charges.
1956 - "Silk Stockings" closes at Imperial Theater
NYC after 461 performances
1956 - Bulgarian vice premier Traitsjo Kostov rehabilitated
1956 - German war criminals Hinrichsen/Ruhl/Siebens/Viebahn
freed
1956 - Hudsonville-Standale Tornado: The western half of the
Lower Peninsula of Michigan is struck by a deadly F5 tornado.
Beat Poet Allen GinsbergBeat Poet Allen Ginsberg 1957 -
Samuel Beckett's "Endgame," premieres in London
1957 - USSR performs atmospheric nuclear test
1958 - "Say, Darling" opens at ANTA Theater NYC
for 332 performances
1958 - Fidel Castro's rebels attacked Havana
1960 - Earthquake at Havre, Belgium
1961 - "Happiest Girl in the World" opens at
Martin Beck NYC for 97 perfs
1961 - Connie Mack Stadium in Phila is sold to J Schleifer Properties
1962 - Jockey Eddie Arcaro retires after 31 years (24,092
races)
1962 - Lt General Marshall S Carter, USA, becomes deputy
director of CIA
1964 - Beatles hold top 6 spots on Sydney Australia record
charts
1964 - US & Panama agree to resume diplomatic relations
1965 - 1st atomic powered spacecraft (snap) launched
1966 - Luna 10 orbits Moon
1966 - Mickey Wright wins LPGA Venice Ladies Golf Open
1966 - Tom Seaver, signs with the Mets for a reported
$50,000 bonus
Cuban President Fidel CastroCuban President Fidel Castro
1967 - WNYE TV channel 25 in Brooklyn, NY (PBS) begins broadcasting
1967 - 113 East Europeans attending World Amateur hockey
championships in Vienna, ask for political asylum
1968 - N Vietnam agrees to meet US reps to set up
preliminary peace talks
1969 - Vietnam War: U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird
announces that the United States will start to "Vietnamize" the war
effort.
1970 - Miriam Hargrave of England passes her drivers test on
40th try
1973 - The first portable cell phone call is made in New
York City, United States.
1974 - 148 tornadoes are reported over an area covering a
dozen states
1974 - Gold hits record $197 an ounce in Paris
1974 - Tornadoes in the east, south & midwest killed approximately
315
1974 - The Super Outbreak occurs, the biggest tornado
outbreak in recorded history. The death toll is 315, with nearly 5,500 injured.
1975 - Bobby Fischer stripped of world chess title for
refusing to defend
1975 - James Rupers kills his family to inherit
1976 - France performs nuclear test at Muruora Island
1976 - Phila Flyers win record tying 20th straight NHL home
game
1977 - 6th Colgate Dinah Shore Golf Championship won by
Kathy Whitworth
Chess Champion Bobby FischerChess Champion Bobby Fischer
1977 - Boston Bruin Jean Ratelle scores his 1,000th NHL point
1977 - Egyptian Pres Anwar Sadat 1st meeting with President
Jimmy Carter
1977 - Netherlands/Belgium/Luxembourg adopt summer time
1978 - 50th Academy Awards - "Annie Hall," Rich
Dreyfuss & Diane Keaton win
1978 - European market & China signs trade agreement
1978 - Larry King moves his radio show from Miami to
Washington DC
1979 - Belgium's Martens government forms
1979 - Jane M Byrne (D), elected 1st woman mayor of Chicago
Ill
1980 - France performs nuclear test
1980 - US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1981 - Arnie Boldt of Saskatchewan jumped 6' 8.25,"
with 1 leg
1981 - Race riots in London's Brixton area
1982 - Buffalo Sabre Gil Perrault scores his 1,000th NHL
point
1982 - UN Security Council demanded Argentina withdraw from
Falkland Islands
1983 - 12th Nabisco Dinah Shore Golf Championship won by Amy
Alcott
Actress Diane KeatonActress Diane Keaton 1983 - 2nd NCAA
Womens Basketball Championship: South Cal beats LA Tech 69-67
1984 - Bombay beat Delhi on 1st innings to win Ranji Trophy
1984 - Guinea suspends constitution after coup
1984 - Soyuz T-11 carries 3 cosmonauts (1 Indian-Rakesh
Sharma) to Salyut 7
1985 - French government adopts equal electoral system
1985 - Players' Association agrees to expand LCS from 5 to 7
games
1985 - Vic Elliot pocketed 15,780 pool balls in 24 hours in
London
1986 - Maureen O'Boyle (future host of Current Affair) is
raped
1986 - US national debt hits $2,000,000,000,000
1987 - Bill Elliott sets NASCAR qualify record of 212.809
mph at Talladega
1987 - Cubs trade Dennis Eckersley to A's for 3 minor
leaguers
1987 - Duchess of Windsors jewels auctioned for £31,380,197
1987 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern
Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1988 - 17th Nabisco Dinah Shore Golf Championship won by Amy
Alcott
1988 - 7th NCAA Women's Basketball Championship: Louisiana
Tec beat Auburn 56-54
1988 - Mario Lemieux wins NHL scoring title, stopping
Gretzky's 7 year streak
1988 - NJ Devils beat Blackhawks, 4-3 in OT to join playoffs
for 1st time
1988 - Somalia & Ethiopia sign accord about Ogaden
desert
1988 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern
Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1989 - "Sunrise" a Gannett newspaper begins
publishing for Bronx
1989 - 51st NCAA Men's Basketball Championship: Mich beats
Seton Hall 80-79 (OT)
1989 - Mets win 11th consecutive home opener 8-4 over St
Louis at Shea Stad
1991 - "Penn & Teller - Refrigerator Tour"
opens at Eugene O'Neill NYC
1991 - 12th Emmy Sports Award presentation
1991 - Bo Jackson signs 1-year contract with Chicago White
Sox
1991 - Thomas Bos skates world record 3 km (3:65.16)
1991 - UN Security Council adopts Gulf War truce resolution
1992 - 1st exhibition game at Camden Field-Orioles beat NY
Mets
1994 - 13th NCAA Women Basketball Championship: NC beats
Louisiana Tech 60-59
1994 - 1st roster of Silver Bullets (all-female pro baseball
team) announced
1994 - 6th Seniors Golf Tradition: Ray Floyd
1995 - 57th NCAA Men's Basketball Championship: UCLA Bruins
beats Arkansas 89-78
Radio shock jock Howard SternRadio shock jock Howard Stern
1995 - Howard Stern gets in trouble for disparaging remarks about Selena
1996 - South Australia grab exciting draw vs W A to win
Sheffield Shield
1996 - St Francis Fighting Saints scores college baseball
run record 71-1
1997 - "Dream-Johnny Mercer Musical," opens at
Royale NYC for 109 performance
1997 - Thalit massacre begins in Algeria; all but 1 of the
53 inhabitants of Thalit are killed by guerrillas.
1998 - World Ice Dance Figure Skating Championship in Minn
2000 - 62nd NCAA Men's Basketball Championship: at RCA Dome
Indianapolis
2004 - Islamic terrorists involved in the 11 March 2004
Madrid attacks 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.
2009 - Australia formally adopts the United Nations
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
2012 - Spanish unemployment reaches record high, youth
unemployment stands at 50%
2012 - Moscow fire kills 17 migrant workers
2012 - US President Barack Obama officially secures
Democratic presidential nomination
2013 - 46 people are killed and 100 are injured by a
court-house suicide bombing in Farah, Afghanistan
2013 - 50 people are killed by flooding across Argentina
2013 - 24 people are killed after a bus plunges off a cliff in Papa New Guinea1513 - Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed in Florida. He had sighted the land the day before. 1776 - George Washington received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Harvard College . 1829 - James Carrington patented the coffee mill. 1860 - The first Pony Express riders left St. Joseph, MO and Sacramento, CA. The trip across country took about 10 days. The Pony Express only lasted about a year and a half. 1865 - Union forces occupy Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. 1866 - Rudolph Eickemeyer and G. Osterheld patented a blocking and shaping machine for hats. 1882 - The American outlaw Jesse James was shot in the back and killed by Robert Ford for a $5,000 reward. There was later controversy over whether it was actually Jesse James that had been killed. 1910 - Alaska's Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America was climbed. 1933 - First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt informed newspaper reporters that beer would be served at the White House. This followed the March 22 legislation that legalized "3.2" beer. 1936 - Richard Bruno Hauptmann was executed for the kidnapping and death of the son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh. 1942 - The Japanese began their all-out assault on the U.S. and Filipino troops at Bataan. 1946 - Lt. General Masaharu Homma, the Japanese commander responsible for the Bataan Death March, was executed in the Philippines. 1948 - U.S. President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan to revive war-torn Europe. It was $5 billion in aid for 16 countries. 1949 - Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis debuted on radio on the "Martin and Lewis Show". The NBC program ran until 1952. 1953 - "TV Guide" was published for the first time. 1967 - The U.S. State Department said that Hanoi might be brainwashing American prisoners. 1968 - Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "mountaintop" speech just 24 hours before he was assassinated. 1968 - North Vietnam agreed to meet with U.S. representatives to set up preliminary peace talks. 1972 - Charlie Chaplin returned to the U.S. after a twenty-year absence. 1979 - Jane Byrne became the first female mayor in Chicago. 1982 - John Chancellor stepped down as anchor of the "The NBC Nightly News." Roger Mudd and Tom Brokaw became the co-anchors of the show. 1983 - It was reported that Vietnamese occupation forces had overrun a key insurgent base in western Cambodia. 1984 - Sikh terrorists killed a member of the Indian Parliament in his home. 1984 - Col. Lansana Konte became the new president of Guinea when the armed forces seized power after the death of Sekou Toure. 1985 - The U.S. charged that Israel violated the Geneva Convention by deporting Shiite prisoners. 1986 - The U.S. national debt hit $2 trillion. 1987 - Riots disrupted mass during the Pope's visit to Santiago, Chili. 1993 - The Norman Rockwell Museum opened in Stockbridge, MA. 1996 - An Air Force jetliner carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown crashed in Croatia, killing all 35 people aboard. 1996 - Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski was arrested. He pled guilty in January 1998 to five Unabomber attacks in exchange for a life sentence without chance for parole. 1998 - The Dow Jones industrial average climbed above 9,000 for the first time. 2000 - A U.S. federal judge ruled that Microsoft had violated U.S. antitrust laws by keeping "an oppressive thumb" on its competitors. Microsoft said that they would appeal the ruling. 2000 - The Nasdaq set a one-day record when it lost 349.15 points to close at 4,233.68. 2010 - The Wi-Fi version of the Apple iPad went on sale.
1860 First pony express service began. 1882 Outlaw Jesse James was shot in the back by Bob Ford, one of his own gang members, reportedly for a 10,000 reward. 1930 Ras Tafari became Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. 1936 Bruno Hauptmann was electrocuted for the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. 1948 President Truman signed the Marshall Plan, which would foster the recovery of war-torn Europe. 1974 "Super Tornado Outbreak" strikes 13 U.S. states. 1996 U.S. commerce secretary Ronald Brown died in plane crash in Croatia. 1996 Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was arrested. 2004 A suspect in Madrid's March bombings blew up himself and three others. 2004 14-year-old soccer star Freddy Adu became the youngest player in an American professional sport in over a century.
The following links are to web sites that were used to complete this blog entry:
http://www.historyorb.com/today/events.php
http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/apr03.htm
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory
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