Today is Tuesday, April 3, the 94th day of 2012. There are 272 days left in the year.

Today is Tuesday, April 3, the 94th day of 2012. There are 272 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1776: George Washington receives an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Harvard College.

1860: The legendary Pony Express begins carrying mail between St. Joseph, Mo., and Sacramento, Calif. (The delivery system lasts only 18 months before giving way to the transcontinental telegraph.)

1882: Outlaw Jesse James is shot to death in St. Joseph, Mo., by Robert Ford, a member of James’ gang.

1936: Bruno Hauptmann is electrocuted in Trenton, N.J., for the kidnap-murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr.

1942: During World War II, Japanese forces begin their final assault on Bataan against American and Filipino troops who surrender six days later; the capitulation is followed by the notorious Bataan Death March.

1946: Lt. Gen. Masaharu Homma, the Japanese commander held responsible for the Bataan Death March, is executed by firing squad outside Manila.

1948: President Harry S. Truman signs into law the Marshall Plan, designed to help European allies rebuild after World War II and resist Communism.

1968: The day before he is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his famous “mountaintop” speech to a rally of striking sanitation workers.

1974: Deadly tornadoes strike wide parts of the South and Midwest before jumping across the border into Canada; more than 300 fatalities result.

VINDICATOR FILES

1987: Three Newton Falls school district students remain in Warren hospitals after a school bus carrying 39 students from the middle school in Lordstown overturned on Selkirk-Bush Road after its tires left the road. Newton falls has been using the Lordstown school since its schools were damaged by the tornado.

The Rt. Rev. David C. Bowman, bishop coadjutor of the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York, returns to Canfield to preside at a service celebrating the 20th anniversary of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, where he celebrated the first Eucharist service in 1967.

1972: The FBI arrests 14 people, including notorious gamblers Anthony Gianfrancesco and Campbell’s Calvin Minyard, for gambling violations on secret indictments returned by a federal grand jury in Cleveland.

The Youngstown Branch of the NAACP asks the Youngstown Board of Education to appeal a ruling by Common Pleas Judge Elwyn V. Jenkins that restrained the board from instituting relaxed discipline policies that had been suggested by the North Side Concerned Parents Group.

1962: Three district directors of the United Steelworkers of America, including James P. Griffin of Youngstown, deny claims by national columnist Victor Riesel that they were part of a “rebel group” that forced union President David J. McDonald to break a private pledge to President Kennedy during recent negotiations.

Fred M. Lloyd, business manager and assistant superintendent of the Mahoning Tuberculosis Sanatorium, resigns and is succeeded by Frank Barton, Youngstown Area Chamber of Commerce executive.

1937: President William McKinley’s birthplace at McKinley Heights just outside Niles is destroyed by a mysterious fire. The house had originally stood in downtown Niles but was moved several times, the last time to McKinley Heights about 25 years ago.