April 3

1764 – Austrian arch duke Jozef crowned himself Roman Catholic king

1776 – Washington receives honorary Ll.D. degree from Harvard College

1856 – Gunpowder in church explodes killing 4,000 in Rhodos

1868 – An Hawaiian surfs on highest wave ever, he rides a 50′ tidal wave

1910 – Highest mountain in North America, Alaska’s Mt McKinley climbed

1922 – Stalin appointed General Secretary of Communist Party

1926 – Second flight of a liquid-fueled rocket by Robert Goddard

1929 – RMS Queen Mary is ordered from John Brown & Company Shipbuilding and Engineering by Cunard Line.

1933 – First airplane flight over Mt Everest

1941 – Churchill warns Stalin of German invasion

1955 – The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Allen Ginsberg’s book Howl against obscenity charges.

1960 – Earthquake at Havre, Belgium

1973 – The first portable cell phone call is made in New York City,

1986 – US national debt hits $2,000,000,000,000

2004 – Islamic terrorists involved in the March 11 2004 Madrid attacks are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves.

2009 – Australia formally adopts the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

2012 – Spanish unemployment reaches record high, youth unemployment stands at 50%

1151 – Igor Svyatoslavich, Ukrainian prince (d. 1202)

1693 – George Edwards, English naturalist (d. 1773)

1783 – Washington Irving, US writer (Legend of Sleepy Hollow)

1823 – William Macy “Boss” Tweed, corrupt political boss

1893 – Princess Maud of Fife (d. 1945)

1898 – Henry R Luce, Tengchow China, publisher (Time, Fortune, Life)

1924 – Doris Day, Cincinnati Oh, “girl next door” actress (Pillow Talk)

1924 – Marlon Brando, Omaha Neb, actor (Superman, Godfather)

1926 – Virgil Grissom, Mitchell Ind, astronaut (Merc 4, Gemini 3)

1934 – Jane Goodall, London England, ethologist (studied African chimps)

1942 – Wayne Newton, American singer

1882 – Jesse James, outlaw, shot dead at 34, in St Joseph Missouri by Robert Ford

1936 – Bruno Hauptmann, convicted Lindbergh baby killer, executed

1946 – Masaharu Homma, Lt Gen (responsible for Bataan Death March), executed

1950 – Kurt Julian Weill, German composer (Dreigroschenoper), dies at 50