Today’s highlight

On April 3, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered what turned out to be his final speech, telling a rally of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, that “I’ve been to the mountaintop” and “seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. ...” (About 20 hours later, King was felled by an assassin’s bullet at the Lorraine Motel.)

On this date

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

1936: Bruno Hauptmann was electrocuted in Trenton, New Jersey, for the kidnap-murder of 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh Jr.

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

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

1973: The first handheld portable telephone was demonstrated for reporters on a New York City street corner as Motorola executive Martin Cooper called Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.

1996: Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski (kah-ZIHN’-skee) was arrested at his remote Montana cabin..

Today’s birthdays

Conservationist Jane Goodall is 90. Singer Wayne Newton is 82. Singer Tony Orlando is 80. Actor Alec Baldwin is 66. Comedian-actor Eddie Murphy is 63.