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Today in History, April 3rd

On April 3, 1860, the Pony Express began carrying mail between Missouri and California. Plus the Marshall Plan and the first cell phone call.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published April 3, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

April 3 is best known as the day in 1860 when the Pony Express made its first runs between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. The date also saw President Harry Truman sign the Marshall Plan into law in 1948 and Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his “Mountaintop” speech in Memphis in 1968.

The big story: The Pony Express Hits the Trail (1860)

By 1860, plenty of Americans lived in California, Oregon and Utah, and getting a letter to them was painfully slow. Gold seekers, Mormon settlers and Oregon Trail families had all pushed demand west, and in 1858 the postmaster general had actually cut overland mail service to California. Three businessmen, William H. Russell, Alexander Majors and William B. Waddell, saw an opening. On April 3, 1860, their new service sent riders out from both ends of the line at once: one from St. Joseph, Missouri, the other from Sacramento. Relays of riders covered the more than 1,800 miles in about 10 days. One newspaper ad offered riders $50 a month plus room and board. The Pony Express became a legend almost at once, but it did not last. The transcontinental telegraph connected San Francisco and New York on October 26, 1861, and the service ended that same day.

More events on April 3

Year	What happened
1776	Short of money for a real navy, the Continental Congress authorized privateers to attack British ships.
1865	Union troops captured Richmond, Virginia, the Confederate capital, a day after Confederate forces abandoned it.
1882	Outlaw Jesse James was shot and killed in St. Joseph, Missouri, by Robert Ford, a member of his own gang who was after reward money.
1922	Joseph Stalin became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
1936	Bruno Hauptmann, convicted of kidnapping and murdering the infant son of aviator Charles Lindbergh, was executed in the electric chair.
1948	President Harry Truman signed the Economic Assistance Act, which put the Marshall Plan to rebuild postwar Europe into law.
1968	Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “Mountaintop” speech in Memphis. He was assassinated the next day.
1973	A Motorola engineer made the first known call on a handheld cell phone, a brick-sized prototype, by calling Bell Laboratories.
1996	Federal agents arrested Theodore Kaczynski at his cabin in Montana and accused him of being the Unabomber.
2010	Apple’s iPad went on sale in the United States. More than 300,000 were sold on the first day.
2016	The Panama Papers, a leak of more than 11 million documents on offshore finances, were made public.

Born on April 3

1783: Washington Irving, American author of “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
1924: Marlon Brando, American actor who won Oscars for On the Waterfront and The Godfather.
1934: Jane Goodall, English scientist known for her decades of chimpanzee research at Gombe Stream in Tanzania.