What Happened on April 3rd in History
30 historical events on this date
Japanese Lt. General Masaharu Homma is executed in the Philippines for leading the Bataan Death March.
Lieutenant general is a military rank used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the...
Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.
The Cold War was a period of international geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist...
In Jeju Province, South Korea, a civil-war-like period of violence and human rights abuses known as the Jeju uprising begins.
Jeju Province, officially Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, is the southernmost province of South Korea, consisting of eight inhabited and 55 uninhabited islands, including Marado, Udo, the...
The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Allen Ginsberg's book Howl against obscenity charges.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The...
Hudsonville–Standale tornado: The western half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan is struck by a deadly F5 tornado.
From April 2–3, 1956, a large, deadly tornado outbreak affected the Great Plains, parts of the South, and the upper Midwest in the contiguous United States, especially the Great Lakes region. The...
LAN-Chile Flight 621 crashes in the Andes mountains, killing 21 people, including Argentinian football player Eliseo Mouriño.
LAN-Chile Flight 621 crashed in the Andes on 3 April 1961. All twenty-four people on board were killed, including eight professional footballers and two members of the coaching staff from CD Green...
Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech; he was assassinated the next day.
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister who was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. He advanced civil...
Vietnam War: United States Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announces that the United States will start to "Vietnamize" the war effort.
The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while...
Martin Cooper of Motorola makes the first handheld mobile phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.
Martin Cooper is an American engineer. He is a pioneer in the wireless communications industry, especially in radio spectrum management, with eleven patents in the field.
The 1974 Super Outbreak occurs, the second largest tornado outbreak in recorded history (after the 2011 Super Outbreak). The death toll is 315, with nearly 5,500 injured.
The 1974 Super Outbreak was one of the most intense tornado outbreaks on record, occurring on April 3–4, 1974, across much of the United States. It was one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks in U.S....
Vietnam War: Operation Babylift, a mass evacuation of children in the closing stages of the war begins.
Operation Babylift was a mass evacuation of children from South Vietnam to the United States and other Western countries at end of the Vietnam War, in April 1975. Over 3,300 infants and children...
Bobby Fischer refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title of World Champion by default.
Robert James Fischer was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he won his first of a record eight US Championships at the age of 14. In 1964, he won...
US Congress restores a federal trust relationship with the 501 members of the Shivwits, Kanosh, Koosharem, and the Indian Peaks and Cedar City bands of the Paiute people of Utah.
The United States Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a bicameral legislature, including a lower body, the U.S. House of Representatives, and an...
The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, is unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.
The Osborne 1 is the first commercially successful portable computer, released on April 3, 1981, by Osborne Computer Corporation. It weighs 24.5 lb (11.1 kg), cost US$1,795, and runs the CP/M 2.2...
The US Supreme Court upholds the jurisdictional rights of tribal courts under the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 in Mississippi Choctaw Band v. Holyfield.
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over...
The outcome of the Grand National horse race is declared void for the first (and only) time.
The Grand National is a National Hunt horse race held annually at Aintree Racecourse in Aintree, Merseyside, England, near Liverpool. First run in 1839 as the Grand Liverpool Steeplechase, it is a...
Suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski is captured at his Montana cabin in the United States.
Theodore John Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, was an American mathematician and domestic terrorist. A mathematics prodigy, he abandoned his academic career in 1969 to pursue a reclusive...
A United States Air Force Boeing T-43 crashes near Dubrovnik Airport in Croatia, killing 35, including Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown.
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is a part of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and is one of the six armed forces and...
The Thalit massacre begins in Algeria; all but one of the 53 inhabitants of Thalit are killed by guerrillas.
The Thalit massacre took place in Thalit village, some 70 km from Algiers, on April 3–4, 1997 during the Algerian Civil War. Fifty-two out of the 53 inhabitants were killed by having their throats...
United States v. Microsoft Corp.: Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust law by keeping "an oppressive thumb" on its competitors.
United States of America v. Microsoft Corporation, 253 F.3d 34, was a landmark American antitrust law case at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The U.S....
Islamic terrorists involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombings are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves.
Islamic terrorism is a form of religious terrorism carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists with the aim of achieving various political or religious objectives, such...
Conventional-Train World Speed Record: A French TGV train on the LGV Est high speed line sets an official new world speed record of 574.8 km/h (159.6 m/s, 357.2 mph).
The TGV holds a series of land speed records for rail vehicles achieved by SNCF, the French national railway, and its industrial partners. The high-speed trials are intended to expand the limits of...
ATA Airlines, once one of the ten largest U.S. passenger airlines and largest charter airline, files for bankruptcy for the second time in five years and ceases all operations.
ATA Airlines, Inc., formerly known as American Trans Air and commonly referred to as ATA, was an American low-cost and charter airline based in Indianapolis, Indiana. ATA operated scheduled...
Texas law enforcement cordons off the FLDS's YFZ Ranch. Eventually 533 women and children will be taken into state custody.
Texas is the most populous state in the Southern United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and an international...
Jiverly Antares Wong opens fire at the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York, killing thirteen and wounding four before committing suicide.
On April 3, 2009, a mass shooting occurred at the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York. At approximately 10:30 a.m. EDT, Jiverly Wong entered the facility and killed...
Apple Inc. released the first generation iPad, a tablet computer.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley, and known for consumer electronics, software and online services. Founded in...
More than 50 people die in floods resulting from record-breaking rainfall in La Plata and Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Between 1 and 3 April 2013, the northeastern section of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, experienced several flash floods that claimed the lives of 101 people. Greater La Plata was hardest hit with...
The Panama Papers, a leak of legal documents, reveals information on 214,488 offshore companies.
The Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents published from April 3, 2016. The papers detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. These...
A bomb explodes in the St Petersburg metro system, killing 14 and injuring several more people.
On 3 April 2017, a terrorist attack using an explosive device took place on the Saint Petersburg Metro between Sennaya Ploshchad and Tekhnologichesky Institut stations. Eleven people were initially...
YouTube headquarters shooting: A 38-year-old gunwoman opens fire at YouTube Headquarters in San Bruno, California, injuring three people before committing suicide.
On April 3, 2018, at approximately 12:46 p.m. PDT, a shooting occurred at the headquarters of the American video-sharing website YouTube in San Bruno, California. The shooter was identified as...