Once Upon A Time – April 3 – 1973 – 1st Mobile Phone Call Is Made In Downtown Manhattan, NYC By Motorola Employee

1367 Battle of Navarrete [Nájera], La Rioja, Castile: An alliance of King Peter of Castile, England, Aquitaine, Majorca and Navarra defeats Count Henry of Castile

1645 English Long Parliament passes the Self-Denying Ordinance, limiting regional armies, significant step toward New Model Army

1860 Start of the Pony Express, delivers mail by horse and rider relay teams between St Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California

1922 Joseph Stalin is appointed General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party by an ailing Vladimir Lenin

1948 US President Harry Truman signs the Marshall Plan to rebuild war-torn Western Europe after World War II, granting an initial $5 billion in aid to 16 European countries

1973 1st mobile phone call is made in downtown Manhattan, NYC by Motorola employee Martin Cooper to the Bell Labs headquarters in New Jersey

2016 Panama Papers published – 11.5 million confidential documents from offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca expose widespread illegal activities including fraud, kleptocracy, tax evasion and the violation of international sanctions by the world’s elite in the world’s largest ever data leak

Historical Events Today Events in 2023

Today in Film & TV

1953 American magazine “TV Guide” publishes 1st issue; cover features photo of Lucille Ball’s new born baby boy, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV (later professionally known as Desi Arnaz, Jr.)

Today in Music

1960 Elvis Presley records ‘It’s Now Or Never’, ‘Fever’ and ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight’ at RCA studios in Nashville, Tennessee

Today in Sport

1975 Bobby Fischer stripped of world chess title for refusing to defend it, title awarded to Russian Anatoly Karpov

MORE FACTS…

1882 American outlaw Jesse James is shot in the back of the head and killed by fellow gang member Robert Ford at home in St. Joseph, Missouri

1868 A Hawaiian surfs on highest wave ever – a 50-foot tidal wave

Famous Weddings

1920 Novelist and short story writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (23) weds novelist Zelda Sayre (19) at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York

1951 Actress and singer Doris Day (29) marries producer Martin Melcher (35) in Burbank, California

1995 Canadian actress Neve Campbell (21) weds Canadian bartender and actor Jeff Colt; divorce in 1998