April 3 in Pop Culture History

33 – Researchers from Oxford published a paper that put the definitive date of Jesus’ crucifixion as Friday, April 3, 33 AD

1860 – Pony Express mail, traveling by horse and rider relay teams, simultaneously left St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. They used horses, not ponies.

1885 – Gottlieb Daimler was granted a German patent for his engine design.

1891 – Emma Elizabeth Smith may have been the first murdered by Jack the Ripper in Whitechapel, London.

1953 – TV Guide published its first issue

1955 – The American Civil Liberties Union announced it would defend Allen Ginsberg’s book Howl against obscenity charges.

1956 – Elvis Presley appeared on the Milton Berle Show.

1961 – #1 Hit April 3, 1961 – April 23, 1961: The Marcels – Blue Moon

1966 – The USSR’s Luna 10, the first spacecraft to orbit the moon, entered lunar orbit and completed its first orbit 3 hours later.

1968 – Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his I’ve Been to the Mountaintop speech. in Memphis, Tennessee.

1971 – #1 Hit April 3, 1971 – April 16, 1971: The Temptations – Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)

1973 – The first portable phone call was placed by inventor Martin Cooper to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs.

1976 – #1 Hit April 3, 1976 – April 30, 1976: Johnnie Taylor – Disco Lady

1978 – At the 50th annual Academy Awards, held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, Woody Allen’s Annie Hall won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1977.

1981 – The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, was unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco.

1983 – Martin Cooper, Motorola project manager, demonstrated the 1st mobile phone, the DynaTAC 8000x. It was designed by Rudy Krolopp and the 2½ pound cell phone was soon made available for $3,995.

1986 – Merv Griffin sold Merv Griffin Enterprises, to The Coca-Cola Company, for $250,000,000.

1987 – Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol was released in theaters.

1992 – Beethoven, Thunderheart, Rock-A-Doodle and Straight Talk debuted in theaters.

1996 – “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski was captured at his cabin in Montana.

1998 – Lost in Space, Barney’s Great Adventure and Mercury Rising were released in theaters.

2000 – Microsoft was ruled to have violated United States antitrust law by keeping “an oppressive thumb” on its competitors.

2009 – Fast and Furious and Adventureland debuted in theaters.

2010 – Apple released the first generation iPad, a tablet computer.

2015 – Furious 7 was released in theaters.

April 3, 2021 – April 9, 2021: Peaches – Justin Bieber featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon