YEARS AGO FOR APRIL 3

Today is Wednesday, April 3, the 93rd day of 2019. There are 272 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1860: The legendary Pony Express begins carrying mail between St. Joseph, Mo., and Sacramento, Calif. (The delivery system lasted 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.

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

1968: Civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivers what turns out to be his final speech, telling a rally of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., that “I’ve been to the mountaintop” and “seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!” (About 20 hours later, King was felled by an assassin’s bullet at the Lorraine Motel.)

1974: Deadly tornadoes hit wide parts of the South and Midwest before jumping across the border into Canada; more than 300 people die.

1996: Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski is arrested at his remote Montana cabin.

2018: President Donald Trump says he wants to use the military to secure the U.S.-Mexico border until his promised border wall was built.

VINDICATOR FILES

1994: The Scottish Rite Cathedral in New Castle, Pa., which has banquet facilities and a 2,800-seat auditorium, is struggling financially.

Hospitals in Warren record their first substantial decline in Caesarean-section birth rates during the past four years.

Boy Scout Troop 22 at St. Christine Church in Youngstown will award four Eagle Scout awards to Brian Turney, Jeff Kupec, Jeff Kempe and John Slanina.

1979: The General Motors Lordstown plant cuts its first shift to four hours because of a shortage of parts due to a strike by truckers. About 4,000 employees were sent home early.

A state audit finds seven present and former part-time employees of the Trumbull County Nursing Home owe $5,853 because of improper payment for vacations, holidays and accrued sick leave.

James P. Griffin, 67, retired assistant of the president of the United Steelworkers of America International Union dies in North Side Hospital.

1969: Firemen from seven departments battle a stubborn fire that gutted part of Maplewood High School in Trumbull County.

The Park Book Store on West Federal Street is raided for the second time this year and a new employee, Robert Patton Jr., 20, a student at Youngstown State University, is charged by Youngstown’s Intelligence and Security Squad with exhibiting obscene literature.

Thomas A. Cleary Jr., who got his basic training in steelmaking from his father, Thomas A. Cleary, one of the area’s top old-time steelmakers, is stepping into Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co.’s top steel-making post as general manager of steel operations.

1944: Lt. James A. Krispinsky of Youngstown, the pilot of a Liberator, is one of three airmen who died trying to land their crippled plane in an effort to save a wounded crewman who couldn’t parachute from the plane. Five other crewmen jumped to safety, but Krispinsky and two others stayed aboard. The plane left the runway in Italy and smashed into a mound of dirt.

Police are seeking a hit and run driver who fatally injured Paul Class and injured a companion, Joseph Zimmer, as the men were changing a tire. Class was thrown 40 feet and had a leg torn off. Zimmer is in fair condition.

St. Columba’s, perennial title holder in the Parochial Basketball League, captures its 14th championship by defeating St. Stan’s 41-51 at the Ursuline High School gym.