On This Day — 3 April
2000s
2018
YouTube headquarters shooting: A 38-year-old gunwoman opens fire at YouTube Headquarters in San Bruno, California, injuring three people before committing suicide.
YouTube headquarters shooting
2017
A bomb explodes in the St Petersburg metro system, killing 14 and injuring several more people.
2017 Saint Petersburg Metro bombing
2016
The Panama Papers, a leak of legal documents, reveals information on 214,488 offshore companies.
Panama Papers
2013
More than 50 people die in floods resulting from record-breaking rainfall in La Plata and Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2013 Argentina floods
2010
Apple Inc. released the first generation iPad, a tablet computer.
Apple Inc.
2009
Jiverly Antares Wong opens fire at the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York, killing thirteen and wounding four before committing suicide.
2009 Binghamton shooting
2008
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
2008
Texas law enforcement cordons off the FLDS's YFZ Ranch. Eventually 533 women and children will be taken into state custody.
Texas
2007
Conventional-Train World Speed Record: A French TGV train on the LGV Est high speed line sets an official new world speed record of 574.8Â km/h (159.6Â m/s, 357.2Â mph).
TGV world speed record
2004
Islamic terrorists involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombings are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves.
Islamic terrorism
2000
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 v. Microsoft Corp.
1900s
1997
The Thalit massacre begins in Algeria; all but one of the 53 inhabitants of Thalit are killed by guerrillas.
Thalit massacre
1996
Suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski is captured at his Montana cabin in the United States.
Ted Kaczynski
1996
A United States Air Force Boeing T-43 crashes near Dubrovnik Airport in Croatia, killing 35, including Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown.
United States Air Force
1993
The outcome of the Grand National horse race is declared void for the first (and only) time.
Grand National
1989
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.
Supreme Court of the United States
1981
The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, is unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.
Osborne 1
1980
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.
United States Congress
1975
Vietnam War: Operation Babylift, a mass evacuation of children in the closing stages of the war begins.
Operation Babylift
1975
Bobby Fischer refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title of World Champion by default.
Bobby Fischer
1974
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.
1974 Super Outbreak
1973
Martin Cooper of Motorola makes the first handheld mobile phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.
Martin Cooper (inventor)
1969
Vietnam War: United States Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announces that the United States will start to "Vietnamize" the war effort.
Vietnam War
1968
Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech; he was assassinated the next day.
Martin Luther King Jr.
1961
LAN-Chile Flight 621 crashes in the Andes mountains, killing 21 people, including Argentinian football player Eliseo Mouriño.
LAN-Chile Flight 621
1956
Hudsonville–Standale tornado: The western half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan is struck by a deadly F5 tornado.
Tornado outbreak of April 2–3, 1956
1955
The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Allen Ginsberg's book Howl against obscenity charges.
American Civil Liberties Union
1948
Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5Â billion in aid for 16 countries.
Cold War
1948
In Jeju Province, South Korea, a civil-war-like period of violence and human rights abuses known as the Jeju uprising begins.
Jeju Province
1946
Japanese Lt. General Masaharu Homma is executed in the Philippines for leading the Bataan Death March.
Lieutenant general
1942
World War II: Japanese forces begin an assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula.
World War II
1936
Bruno Richard Hauptmann is executed for the kidnapping and death of Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., the infant son of pilot Charles Lindbergh.
Bruno Richard Hauptmann
1933
First flight over Mount Everest, the British Houston-Mount Everest Flight Expedition, led by the Marquis of Clydesdale and funded by Lucy, Lady Houston.
Mount Everest
1922
Joseph Stalin becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Joseph Stalin
1920
Attempts are made to carry out the failed assassination attempt on General Mannerheim, led by Aleksander Weckman by order of Eino Rahja, during the White Guard parade in Tampere, Finland.
Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim
1905
Association football club Boca Juniors is founded in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Boca Juniors
1800s
1895
The trial in the libel case brought by Oscar Wilde begins, eventually resulting in his imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.
Defamation
1888
Jack the Ripper: The first of 11 unsolved brutal murders of women committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London, occurs.
Jack the Ripper
1885
Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for a light, high-speed, four-stroke engine, which he uses seven months later to create the world's first motorcycle, the Daimler Reitwagen.
Gottlieb Daimler
1882
American Old West: Robert Ford kills Jesse James.
American frontier
1865
American Civil War: Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America.
American Civil War
1860
The first successful United States Pony Express run from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, begins.
Pony Express
1851
Rama IV is crowned King of Thailand after the death of his half-brother, Rama III.
Mongkut
Before 1800
1721
Robert Walpole becomes, in effect, the first Prime Minister of Great Britain, though he himself denied that title.
Robert Walpole
1589
The janissaries revolt in response to the debasement of coins.
Janissary
1559
The second of two treaties making up the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis is signed, ending the Italian Wars.
Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis
1077
The Patriarchate of Friûl, the first Friulian state, is created.
Friuli
1043
Edward the Confessor is crowned King of England.
Edward the Confessor
956
Polyeuctus of Constantinople is elected as patriarch of Constantinople.
Polyeuctus of Constantinople
686
Maya king Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ahk' assumes the crown of Calakmul.
Maya civilization