April 3 Birthday
On April 3, 1865, Union troops entered Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy. The Confederate government had fled the previous night, setting fire to munitions and supplies. The fire spread, destroying a quarter of the city. Abraham Lincoln visited the fallen capital on April 4, walking the streets without a military escort. He sat at Jefferson Davis's desk in the Confederate White House. He was killed eleven days later. Richmond had been the capital of the Confederacy since May 1861, when Virginia seceded. The city had been the industrial heart of the rebellion — its Tredegar Iron Works produced cannons and rails. Its fall meant the end. The Pony Express began on April 3, 1860, when the first rider left St. Joseph, Missouri, heading west. The service carried mail between Missouri and California in ten days — half the time of stagecoach. Riders changed horses every ten to fifteen miles and rode seventy-five to a hundred miles per shift. The service employed about eighty riders, including "Buffalo Bill" Cody, who claimed to have made the longest ride in Pony Express history — 322 miles in twenty-one hours and forty minutes. The Pony Express lasted only eighteen months. The transcontinental telegraph was completed on October 24, 1861, and the service was discontinued two days later. It lost $200,000 in its brief existence. The Marshall Plan was signed on April 3, 1948. Secretary of State George Marshall proposed it in a speech at Harvard in June 1947: the United States would provide $13 billion in economic aid to rebuild Western Europe after World War II. The aid was offered to the Soviet Union and its allies, but Stalin refused and forced his satellite states to refuse as well. The plan rebuilt factories, roads, and infrastructure; it also prevented the spread of communism by giving European workers something to lose. Marshall received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953. The plan's success established the template for American foreign aid, which has been applied — with varying results — ever since. Marlon Brando, born this day in 1924, transformed American acting. He studied with Stella Adler and brought the Method to the screen. In A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), his performance was so raw that audiences did not know how to respond. He won two Oscars and refused the second, for The Godfather, sending Sacheen Littlefeather to the stage to protest Hollywood's treatment of Native Americans. He was the greatest actor of his generation and also one of the most difficult. He gained 300 pounds in his later years and had a moat around his private island in Tahiti. People born on April 3 fall under the zodiac sign of Aries. The birthstone is Diamond and the birth flower is Daisy. Historical events on April 3 include 1860: First Pony Express rider departs from St. Joseph, Missouri, 1865: Union forces occupy Richmond, Confederate capital falls, 1948: President Truman signs Marshall Plan into law. Famous people born on April 3 include Washington Irving (1783), Doris Day (1922), Marlon Brando (1924).