3 April 2025 (MIA)

1559 – The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis treaty is signed, ending the Italian Wars.

1834 – The generals in the Greek War of Independence stand trial for treason.

1865 – American Civil War: Union forces capture Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America

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

1895 – The trial in the libel case brought by Oscar Wilde begins, eventually resulting in his imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.

1922 – Joseph Stalin becomes the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1933 – First flight over Mount Everest, a British expedition, led by the Marquis of Clydesdale, and funded by Lucy, Lady Houston.

1942 – World War II: Japanese forces begin an assault on the United States and Filipino troops on the Bataan Peninsula.

1945 – The Macedonian National Theater starts working continuously after the premiere of Oleksandr Korniychuk’s Platon Krechet.

1948 – United States President Harry S. Truman signs the Marshall Plan, authorizing $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.

1948 – In Jeju Province, South Korea, a civil-war-like period of violence and human rights abuses begins, known as the Jeju massacre.

1969 – Vietnam War: United States Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announces that the United States will start to “Vietnamize” the war effort.

1973 – Martin Cooper of Motorola makes the first handheld mobile phone call to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs, though it took ten years for the DynaTAC 8000X to become the first such phone to be commercially released.

1974 – The 1974 Super Outbreak occurs, the second biggest tornado outbreak in recorded history (after the 2011 Super Outbreak). The death toll is 315, with nearly 5,500 injured.

1975 – Bobby Fischer refuses to play in a chess match against Anatoly Karpov, giving Karpov the title of World Champion by default.

1981 – The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, is unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.

1996 – A United States Air Force airplane carrying United States Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown crashes in Croatia, killing all 35 on board.

1997 – The Thalit massacre begins in Algeria; all but one of the 53 inhabitants of Thalit are killed by guerrillas.

2000 – United States v. Microsoft Corp.: Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust law by keeping “an oppressive thumb” on its competitors.

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

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.

2008 – Texas law enforcement cordons off the FLDS’s YFZ Ranch. Eventually 533 women and children will be removed and taken into state custody.

2010 – Apple Inc. released the first generation iPad, a tablet computer.

2013 – More than 50 people die in floods resulting from record-breaking rainfall in La Plata and Buenos Aires, Argentina.