Historical Events on Thursday, 3rd April

03/04/2018

YouTube headquarters shooting: A 38-year-old gunwoman opens fire at YouTube Headquarters in San Bruno, California, injuring three people before committing suicide.

On April 3, 2018, at approximately 12:46 p.m. PDT, a shooting occurred at the headquarters of the American video-sharing website YouTube in San Bruno, California. The shooter was identified as 38-year-old Nasim Najafi Aghdam, an Iranian-American woman, who entered through an exterior parking garage, approached an outdoor patio, and opened fire with a Smith & Wesson 9 mm semi-automatic pistol. Aghdam wounded three people, one of them critically, before killing herself with her own firearm. She was just two days short of what would have been her 39th birthday.

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03/04/2017

A bomb explodes in the St Petersburg metro system, killing 14 and injuring several more people.

On 3 April 2017, a terrorist attack using an explosive device took place on the Saint Petersburg Metro between Sennaya Ploshchad and Tekhnologichesky Institut stations. Eleven people were initially reported to have died, and five more died later from their injuries, bringing the total to 15.

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03/04/2016

The Panama Papers, a leak of legal documents, reveals information on 214,488 offshore companies.

The Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents published from April 3, 2016. The papers detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. These documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by, and taken from, the former Panamanian offshore law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, and compiled with similar leaks into a searchable database.

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03/04/2013

More than 50 people die in floods resulting from record-breaking rainfall in La Plata and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Between 1 and 3 April 2013, the northeastern section of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, experienced several flash floods that claimed the lives of 101 people. Greater La Plata was hardest hit with 91 reported deaths, and Greater Buenos Aires reported 10 deaths. The flooding was the result of extremely heavy rainfall and is said to be the worst flooding in La Plata's history.

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03/04/2010

Apple Inc. released the first generation iPad, a tablet computer.

Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley, best known for its consumer electronics, software and online services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Company by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, the company was incorporated by Jobs and Wozniak as Apple Computer, Inc. the following year. It was renamed to its current name in 2007 as the company had expanded its focus from computers to consumer electronics. Apple is one of the Big Tech companies.

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03/04/2009

Jiverly Antares Wong opens fire at the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York, killing thirteen and wounding four before committing suicide.

On April 3, 2009, a mass shooting occurred at the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York. At approximately 10:30 a.m. EDT, Jiverly Wong entered the facility and killed thirteen people and wounded four others before committing suicide.

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03/04/2008

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, Inc., formerly known as American Trans Air and commonly referred to as ATA, was an American low-cost and charter airline based in Indianapolis, Indiana. ATA operated scheduled passenger flights throughout the U.S. mainland and Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Portugal as well as military and commercial charter flights around the world.

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Texas law enforcement cordons off the FLDS's YFZ Ranch. Eventually 533 women and children will be taken into state custody.

Texas is the most populous state in the Southern United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south and southwest, that forms a natural boundary delineated by the Rio Grande. Texas has a coastline on the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast. Covering 268,596 square miles (695,660 km2) and with over 31 million residents as of 2024, it is the second-largest U.S. state by area and population. Texas is nicknamed the "Lone Star State" for the single star on its flag, symbolic of its former status as an independent country, the Republic of Texas.

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03/04/2007

Conventional-Train World Speed Record: A French TGV train on the LGV Est high speed line sets an official new world speed record of 574.8 km/h (159.6 m/s, 357.2 mph).

The TGV holds a series of land speed records for rail vehicles achieved by SNCF, the French national railway, and its industrial partners. The high-speed trials are intended to expand the limits of high-speed rail technology, increasing speed and comfort without compromising safety.

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03/04/2004

Islamic terrorists involved in the 2004 Madrid train bombings are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves.

Islamic terrorism is a form of religious terrorism carried out by fundamentalist militant Islamists and Islamic extremists with the aim of achieving various political or religious objectives, such as jihad and caliphate.

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03/04/2000

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 of America v. Microsoft Corporation, 253 F.3d 34, was a landmark American antitrust law case at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The U.S. government accused Microsoft of illegally monopolizing the web browser market for Windows, primarily through the legal and technical restrictions it put on the abilities of PC manufacturers (OEMs) and users to uninstall Internet Explorer and use other programs such as Netscape and Java.

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03/04/1997

The Thalit massacre begins in Algeria; all but one of the 53 inhabitants of Thalit are killed by guerrillas.

The Thalit massacre took place in Thalit village, some 70 km from Algiers, on April 3–4, 1997 during the Algerian Civil War. Fifty-two out of the 53 inhabitants were killed by having their throats cut during a 12-hour rampage. The homes of the villagers were burned down afterward. The attack was attributed to "Islamist guerrillas", thought to be affiliated with the Armed Islamic Group.

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03/04/1996

Suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski is captured at his Montana cabin in the United States.

Theodore John Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, was an American mathematician and domestic terrorist. A mathematics prodigy, he abandoned his academic career in 1969 to pursue a reclusive primitive lifestyle and lone wolf terrorism campaign.

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A United States Air Force Boeing T-43 crashes near Dubrovnik Airport in Croatia, killing 35, including Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown.

The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is a part of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and is one of the six armed forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its origins to 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal Corps, the Air Force was established by transfer of personnel from the Army Air Forces with the enactment of the National Security Act of 1947. It is the second youngest branch of the United States Armed Forces and the fourth in order of precedence. The United States Air Force articulates its core missions as air supremacy, global integrated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, rapid global mobility, global strike, and command and control.

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03/04/1993

The outcome of the Grand National horse race is declared void for the first (and only) time.

The Grand National is a National Hunt horse race held annually at Aintree Racecourse in Aintree, Merseyside, England, near to Liverpool. First run in 1839, as the Grand Liverpool Steeplechase, it is a handicap steeplechase over an official distance of about 4 miles 2+1⁄2 furlongs, with horses jumping 30 fences over two laps. It is the most valuable jump race in Europe, with a prize fund of £1 million in 2017. An event that is prominent in British culture, the race is popular amongst many people who do not normally watch or bet on horse racing at other times of the year.

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03/04/1989

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.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on questions of U.S. constitutional or federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party". In 1803, the court asserted itself the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law.

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03/04/1981

The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, is unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.

The Osborne 1 is the first commercially successful portable computer, released on April 3, 1981, by Osborne Computer Corporation. It weighs 24.5 lb (11.1 kg), cost US$1,795, and runs the CP/M 2.2 operating system. It is powered from a wall socket, as it has no on-board battery, but it is still classed as a portable device since it can be hand-carried when the keyboard is closed.

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03/04/1980

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.

The United States Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a bicameral legislature, including a lower body, the U.S. House of Representatives, and an upper body, the U.S. Senate. They both meet in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.

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03/04/1975

Vietnam War: Operation Babylift, a mass evacuation of children in the closing stages of the war begins.

Operation Babylift was a mass evacuation of children from South Vietnam to the United States and other Western countries at end of the Vietnam War, in April 1975. Over 3,300 infants and children were airlifted, although the actual number has been variously reported.

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Bobby Fischer refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title of World Champion by default.

Robert James Fischer was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he won his first of a record eight US Championships at the age of 14. In 1964, he won with an 11–0 score, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. Qualifying for the 1972 World Championship, Fischer swept matches with Mark Taimanov and Bent Larsen by 6–0 scores. After winning another qualifying match against Tigran Petrosian, Fischer won the title match against Boris Spassky of the USSR, in Reykjavík, Iceland. Publicized as a Cold War confrontation between the US and USSR, the match attracted more worldwide interest than any chess championship before or since.

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03/04/1974

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.

The 1974 Super Outbreak was one of the most intense tornado outbreaks on record, occurring on April 3–4, 1974, across much of the United States. It was one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history. It was also the most violent tornado outbreak ever recorded, with 30 violent tornadoes confirmed. From April 3–4, there were 149 tornadoes confirmed in 13 U.S. states and the Canadian province of Ontario. In the United States, the tornadoes struck Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and New York. The outbreak caused roughly $600 million USD in damage. The outbreak extensively damaged approximately 900 mi2 (2,331 km2) along a total combined path length of 2,600 mi (4,184 km). At one point, as many as 15 separate tornadoes were occurring simultaneously.

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03/04/1973

Martin Cooper of Motorola makes the first handheld mobile phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.

Martin Cooper is an American engineer. He is a pioneer in the wireless communications industry, especially in radio spectrum management, with eleven patents in the field.

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03/04/1969

Vietnam War: United States Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announces that the United States will start to "Vietnamize" the war effort.

The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and US. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until US forces were withdrawn in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian Civil Wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.

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03/04/1968

Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech; he was assassinated the next day.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister who was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. He advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination, which most commonly affected African Americans.

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03/04/1961

LAN-Chile Flight 621 crashes in the Andes mountains, killing 21 people, including Argentinian football player Eliseo Mouriño.

LAN-Chile Flight 621 crashed in the Andes on 3 April 1961. All twenty-four people on board were killed, including eight professional footballers and two members of the coaching staff from CD Green Cross. It was Chile's worst ever aviation disaster at the time.

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03/04/1956

Hudsonville–Standale tornado: The western half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan is struck by a deadly F5 tornado.

From April 2–3, 1956, a large, deadly tornado outbreak affected the Great Plains, parts of the South, and the upper Midwest in the contiguous United States, especially the Great Lakes region. The outbreak produced at least 55 tornadoes, including an F5 that devastated the Grand Rapids metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Michigan on April 3. It was one of three tornadoes to move across southwest Lower Michigan on that day. A fourth tornado struck north of the Manistee area, in the northern part of the peninsula. The Hudsonville–Standale tornado killed 17 and injured 333. It remains the fourth deadliest tornado on record in Michigan and is the most recent F5 on record there. Several other deadly, intense, long-tracked tornadoes also occurred during the outbreak. In addition to the fatalities in Kansas, Oklahoma, Michigan and Berlin, Wisconsin, three people were killed in Tennessee, one person in Kentucky and two more people in Wisconsin. In total, 39 were killed during the entire event.

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03/04/1955

The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Allen Ginsberg's book Howl against obscenity charges.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The budget of the ACLU in 2024 was $383 million.

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03/04/1948

Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.

The Cold War was a period of international geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc. It began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, and sports diplomacy.

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In Jeju Province, South Korea, a civil-war-like period of violence and human rights abuses known as the Jeju uprising begins.

Jeju Province, officially Jeju Special Self-Governing Province, is the southernmost province of South Korea, consisting of eight inhabited and 55 uninhabited islands, including Marado, Udo, the Chuja Archipelago, and the country's largest island, Jeju Island. The province is located in the Korea Strait, with the Korean Peninsula to the northwest, Japan to the east, and China to the west. The province has two cities: the capital Jeju City, on the northern half of the island, and Seogwipo, on the southern half of the island. The island is home to the shield volcano Hallasan, the highest point in South Korea. Jeju and Korean are the official languages of the province, and the vast majority of residents are bilingual.

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03/04/1946

Japanese Lt. General Masaharu Homma is executed in the Philippines for leading the Bataan Death March.

Lieutenant general is a military rank used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the battlefield, who was normally subordinate to a captain general.

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03/04/1942

World War II: Japanese forces begin an assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

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03/04/1936

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 was a German-American carpenter and criminal who was convicted of the abduction and murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The Lindbergh kidnapping became known as the "crime of the century". He was executed in 1936 by electric chair at the Trenton State Prison. Both Hauptmann and his wife, Anna Hauptmann, proclaimed his innocence. In recent years, Hauptmann's guilt has been questioned by authors and researchers, and law enforcement behavior in the case has been widely criticized.

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03/04/1933

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 is Earth's highest mountain above sea level. It lies in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas and marks part of the China–Nepal border at its summit. Its height was most recently measured in 2020 by Chinese and Nepali authorities as 8,848.86 m.

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03/04/1922

Joseph Stalin becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Soviet revolutionary and politician who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held office as general secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952 and as premier from 1941 until his death. Despite initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he eventually consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Stalin codified the Communist Party's official interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, and his version of it is referred to as Stalinism.

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03/04/1920

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.

Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was a Finnish military commander and statesman. He served as the military leader of the Whites in the Finnish Civil War (1918), as regent of Finland (1918–1919), as commander-in-chief of the Finnish Defence Forces during World War II (1939–1945), and as the president of Finland (1944–1946). He became Finland's only field marshal in 1933 and was appointed honorary Marshal of Finland in 1942.

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03/04/1905

Association football club Boca Juniors is founded in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Club Atlético Boca Juniors (CABJ) is an Argentine professional sports club based in La Boca, a neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. The club is best known for its men's professional football team which, since its promotion in 1913, has always played in the Argentine Primera División. The team has won 60 professional titles and 14 amateur titles.

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03/04/1895

The trial in the libel case brought by Oscar Wilde begins, eventually resulting in his imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.

Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions that are false, and can extend to concepts that are more abstract than reputation such as dignity and honour.

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03/04/1888

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 was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer was also called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.

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03/04/1885

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 Wilhelm Daimler was a German engineer, industrial designer and industrialist. He was a pioneer of internal-combustion engines and automobile development. He invented the high-speed liquid petroleum-fueled engine.

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03/04/1882

American Old West: Robert Ford kills Jesse James.

The American frontier, also known as the Old West, and popularly known as the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last few contiguous western territories as states in 1912. This era of massive migration and settlement was particularly encouraged by President Thomas Jefferson following the Louisiana Purchase, giving rise to the expansionist attitude known as "manifest destiny" and historians' "Frontier Thesis". The legends, historical events and folklore of the American frontier, known as the frontier myth, have embedded themselves into United States culture so much so that the Old West, and the Western genre of media specifically, has become one of the defining features of American national identity.

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03/04/1865

American Civil War: Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war lasted a little over four years, ending with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.

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03/04/1860

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

The Pony Express was an American express mail service that used relays of horse-mounted riders between Missouri and California. It was operated by the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company.

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03/04/1851

Rama IV is crowned King of Thailand after the death of his half-brother, Rama III.

Mongkut, posthumously honoured as King Mongkut the Great, was the fourth king of Siam from the Chakri dynasty, titled Rama IV. He reigned from 1851 until his death in 1868.

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03/04/1721

Robert Walpole becomes, in effect, the first Prime Minister of Great Britain, though he himself denied that title.

Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British Whig statesman who is generally regarded as the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain, serving from 1721 to 1742. His formal titles included First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons. He is the longest serving prime minister in UK history, with a tenure of over 20 years.

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03/04/1589

The janissaries revolt in response to the debasement of coins.

A janissary was a member of the elite infantry units that formed the Ottoman sultan's household troops. They were one of the first modern standing armies, and perhaps the first infantry force in the world to be equipped primarily with firearms, adopted during the reign of Murad II. The corps was established under either Orhan or Murad I, and dismantled by Mahmud II in 1826.

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03/04/1559

The second of two treaties making up the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis is signed, ending the Italian Wars.

The Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in April 1559 ended the Italian Wars (1494–1559). It consisted of two separate treaties, one between England and France on 2 April, and another between France and Spain on 3 April. Although he was not a signatory, both were approved by Emperor Ferdinand I, since many of the territorial exchanges concerned states within the Holy Roman Empire.

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03/04/1077

The Patriarchate of Friûl, the first Friulian state, is created.

Friuli is a historical region of northeast Italy. The region is marked by its separate regional and ethnic identity predominantly tied to the Friulians, who speak the Friulian language. It comprises the major part of the autonomous region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, i.e. the administrative provinces of Udine, Pordenone, and Gorizia, excluding Trieste.

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03/04/1043

Edward the Confessor is crowned King of England.

Edward the Confessor was King of the English from 1042 until his death in 1066. He was the last reigning monarch of the House of Wessex.

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03/04/0956

Polyeuctus of Constantinople is elected as patriarch of Constantinople.

Polyeuctus of Constantinople was Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (956–970). His orthodox feast is on 5 February.

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03/04/0686

Maya king Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ahk' assumes the crown of Calakmul.

The Maya civilization was a Mesoamerican civilization that existed from antiquity to the early modern period. It is known by its ancient temples and glyphs (script). The Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. The civilization is also noted for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system.

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