3rd April: Today In History

Today is Monday, April 3rd, the 93rd day of 2017. There are 272 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

Events:

1942:  During World War II, Japanese forces began their final assault on Bataan against American and Filipino troops who surrendered six days later; the capitulation was followed by the notorious Bataan Death March.

1776:  George Washington received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Harvard College.

1860:  The legendary Pony Express began carrying mail between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. (The delivery system lasted only 18 months before giving way to the transcontinental telegraph.)

1869:  Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16, premiered in Copenhagen.

1882:  Outlaw Jesse James was shot to death in St. Joseph, Missouri, by Robert Ford, a member of James’ gang.

1936:  Bruno Hauptmann was electrocuted in Trenton, New Jersey, for the kidnap-murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr.

1946:  Lt. Gen. Masaharu Homma, the Japanese commander held responsible for the Bataan Death March, was executed by firing squad outside Manila.

1948:  President Harry S. Truman signed the Marshall Plan, designed to help European allies rebuild after World War II and resist communism.

1965:  The United States launched the SNAP-10A nuclear power system into Earth orbit; it was the first nuclear reactor sent into space.

1968:   The day before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “mountaintop” speech to a rally of striking sanitation workers.

1979:  Democrat Jane M. Byrne was elected mayor of Chicago, defeating Republican Wallace D. Johnson.

1982:  Maryland college student Stephanie Roper, whose car became disabled, was kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed by two men. (The case inspired creation of the Stephanie Roper Committee and Foundation to lobby for victims’ rights.)

1996:  Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski (kah-ZIHN’-skee) was arrested at his remote Montana cabin. An Air Force jetliner carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and American business executives crashed in Croatia, killing all 35 people aboard. Former Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes, the first black elected mayor of a major U.S. city, died at age 68.

Birthdays:

Actress-singer Doris Day is 95.

Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl is 87.

Conservationist Dame Jane Goodall is 83.

Actor William Gaunt is 80.

Songwriter Jeff Barry is 79.

Actor Eric Braeden is 76.

Actress Marsha Mason is 75.

Singer Wayne Newton is 75.

Singer Tony Orlando is 73.