Today, April 3

801 – During the early stages of the Reconquista of Spain, King Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, recaptures Barcelona from the Moors after a siege of several months.

1860 – The first successful Pony Express run from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, begins.

1865 – Union forces occupy Richmond, Virginia.

1882 – In St. Joseph Missouri, Robert Ford assassinates Jesse James.

1885 – Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for his engine design.

1888 – In the Whitechapel section of London, ‘Jack the Ripper’ commits the first of 11 unsolved murders of women.

1936 – In the New Jersey State Penitentiary at Trenton, Bruno Richard Hauptmann is executed in the electric chair for the kidnapping and death of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., the baby son of pilot Charles Lindbergh.

1942 – Under the command of  Lt. General Masaharu Homma IJA,  Japanese forces begin a final assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula.

1946 – Lt. General Masaharu Homma IJA, is executed by firing squad in the Philippines for war crimes committed by forces under his command during the Bataan Death March.

1948 – President Harry S. Truman signs the ‘Marshall Plan’ into law, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries in western Europe.

1973 – Martin Cooper of Motorola makes the first handheld mobile phone call to his competitor, Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.

1974 – The 1974 Tornado Super Outbreak occurs, the biggest tornado outbreak in recorded history for a 24 hour period until the 2011 Super Outbreak. The 148 tornadoes across the central and southeast U.S. kill 315 people, with nearly 5,500 more injured.

1980 – Congress restores a federal trust relationship with the Shvwits, Kanosh, Koosharem, and the Indian Peaks and Cedar City bands of the Paiute Indian Nation of Utah.

1981 – The  Osborne Computer Corporation, exhibits the first portable computer, the Osborne 1, at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.

1989 – In the case of Mississippi Choctaw Band v. Holyfield, the Supreme Court upholds the jurisdictional rights of tribal courts under the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.

1996 – The “Unabomber”,  Theodore Kaczynski, is arrested at his remote  cabin in the wilderness near Lincoln, Montana.

2000 – In the case of United States v. Microsoft Corp, the Supreme Court rules that Microsoft violated U.S. antitrust law by keeping “an oppressive thumb” on its competitors.

2004 – Islamic moslem terrorists involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombings are trapped by the police in their apartment in Leganés, south of Madrid and commit suicide by blowing themselves up.

2008 – Texas law enforcement cordons off the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saint’s  Yearning For Zion Ranch near Eldorado, Texas and during a search take 533 women and children into state custody, finally releasing them under a writ of mandamus, on May 29th.

2009 – Jiverly Antares Wong, a former student, opens fire at the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York, killing 13 people and wounding 4 before committing suicide.

2010 – Apple Inc. releases the first generation iPad tablet computer.

2016 – The Panama Papers, a leak of legal documents, reveals information on offshore banks, companies and shell corporations used by the wealthy and some public officials for, fraud, tax evasion, money laundering and evading international sanctions.

2018 – Nasim Najafi Aghdam opens fire at the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, wounding 3 people before committing suicide.