On This Day (April 3)

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• 1783 - Washington Irving, American author born. (d. 1859) (Irving was an American author of the early 19th century. Best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" (both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.), he was also a prolific essayist, biographer and historian.)
• 1860 - The first successful Pony Express run from Saint Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California begins.
• 1882 – Jesse James, an outlaw in the American Old West, was shot in the back and killed for a bounty of US$5,000.
• 1895 – The libel trial instigated by Irish author Oscar Wilde began, eventually resulting in Wilde's arrest, trial and imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.
• 1897 - Johannes Brahms, German composer died. (b. 1833) (Ein Deutsches Requiem, Fourth Movement "Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen", Op. 45 - Listen)
  
• 1917 - Vladimir Lenin arrives in Russia from exile, marking the beginning of Bolshevik leadership in the Russian Revolution.
• 1922 – Joseph Stalin became the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
• 1934 - Jane Goodall, English zoologist born. (Goodall is an English UN Messenger of Peace, primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist. She is best-known for her study of chimpanzee social and family life in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania, for 45 years, and for founding the Jane Goodall Institute.)
• 1936 - Bruno Richard Hauptmann is executed for the kidnapping and death of Charles Augustus Lindbergh II, the baby son of world-famous pilot Charles Lindbergh.
• 1948 – The Marshall Plan (poster pictured), an economic recovery program established by U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall to assist the post-World War II re-building of Europe, was signed into law.
  
  
  Marshall Plan Poster
  
  
• 1971 – The Japanese tokusatsu television series Kamen Rider premiered, marking the beginning of the long-running Kamen Rider franchise.
• 1973 – On a New York City street, Motorola researcher Martin Cooper made the first ever call on a handheld mobile phone.
• 1982 - Great Britain dispatched a naval task force to the south Atlantic to reclaim the disputed Falkland Islands from Argentina.