April 3: What Happened on This Day in History (High_school Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1860 - The first successful United States Pony Express run from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California begins.
2. 1865 - American Civil War: Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America.
3. 1885 - Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for his engine design.
4. 1942 - World War II: Japanese forces begin an assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula.
5. 1948 - President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
6. 1968 - Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech.
7. 1973 - Martin Cooper of Motorola makes the first handheld mobile phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, though it took ten years for the DynaTAC 8000X to become the first such phone to be commercially released.
8. 1981 - The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, is unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.
9. 2000 - United States v. Microsoft: Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust laws by keeping "an oppressive thumb" on its competitors.
10. 2008 - Texas law enforcement cordons off the FLDS's YFZ Ranch. Eventually 533 women and children will be removed and taken into state custody.
11. Famous Birthdays: John Abernethy (English surgeon), John Burroughs (American botanist) Henry Luce (American publisher, co-founded Time Magazine), Henry Luce (American publisher, co-founded Time Magazine), Jane Goodall (English primatologist and ethologist)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: April 2

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: April 4

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.