This day in history
Today is Wednesday, April 3, the 94th day of 2024. There are 272 days left in the year.
▶Birthdays: Conservationist Jane Goodall is 90. Actor William Gaunt is 87. Songwriter Jeff Barry is 86. Actor Eric Braeden is 83. Actor Marsha Mason is 82. Singer Wayne Newton is 82. Singer Tony Orlando is 80. Comedy writer Pat Proft is 77. Folk-rock singer Richard Thompson is 75. Blues singerguitarist John Mooney is 69. Actor Alec Baldwin is 66. Actor David Hyde Pierce is 65. Comedian-actor Eddie Murphy is 63. Olympic gold medal ski racer Picabo Street is 53. Actor Cobie Smulders is 42. Rock-pop singer Leona Lewis is 39. Former actor Amanda Bynes is 38. ▶In 1865, Union forces occupied the Confederate capital of Richmond.
▶ 1882, outlaw Jesse James was shot to death in St. Joseph, Mo., by Robert Ford, a member of James’s gang.
▶In 1936, Bruno Hauptmann was electrocuted in Trenton, N.J., for the kidnap-murder of 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh Jr.
▶In 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.
▶In 1944, the US Supreme Court, in Smith v. Allwright, struck down a Democratic Party of Texas rule that allowed only white voters to participate in Democratic primaries.
▶In 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed the Marshall Plan, designed to help European allies rebuild after World War II and resist communism.
▶In 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered what turned out to be his final speech, telling a rally of striking sanitation workers in Memphis that “I’ve been to the mountaintop” and “seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!” (About 20 hours later, King was felled by an assassin’s bullet at the Lorraine Motel.)
▶In 1973, the first handheld portable telephone was demonstrated for reporters on a New York City street corner as Motorola executive Martin Cooper called Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.
▶In 1996, Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was arrested at his remote Montana cabin.
▶In 2012, Mitt Romney tightened his grip on the Republican presidential nomination, sweeping primaries in Wisconsin, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.
▶In 2014, David Letterman announced during a taping of the “Late Show” on CBS that he would retire as host in 2015. (Stephen Colbert was named as his replacement a week later.)