March 30
At the height of the Great Depression, 35,000 unemployed march in New York’s Union Square. Police beat many demonstrators and injure 100. – 1930.
The federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act is enacted. – 1970.
President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest and injured outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by a deranged drifter. – 1981.
March 31
President Martin Van Buren issues a broadly-applicable executive order granting the 10-hour day to all government employees engaged in manual labor. – 1840.
The Eiffel Tower is dedicated in Paris in a ceremony presided over by Gustave Eiffel, the tower’s designer, and attended by Pierre Tirard, French prime minister, a handful of other dignitaries, and 200 construction workers. – 1889.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs legislation to establish the Civilian Conservation Corps, to help alleviate suffering during the Depression. By the time the program ended after the start of World War II it had provided jobs for more than six million men and boys. The average enrollee gained 11 pounds in his first three months. – 1933.
April 1
English pranksters begin popularizing the annual tradition of April Fools’ Day by playing practical jokes on each other. – 1700.
An undersea earthquake off the Alaskan coast triggers a massive tsunami that kills 159 residents in Hawaii. – 1946.
Longest newspaper strike in U.S. history until then, 114 days, ends in New York City. Workers at nine newspapers were involved. – 1963.
Major League Baseball players begin what is to become a 13-day strike and ends when owners agree to increase pension fund payments and to add salary arbitration to the collective bargaining agreement. – 1972.
Eleven-day strike by 34,000 New York City transit workers begins, and halts bus and subway service in all five boroughs before strikers return to work with a 17% raise over two years plus a cost-of-living adjustment. – 1980.
April 2
The U.S. Supreme Court declares unconstitutional a 1918 Washington, D.C. law establishing a minimum wage for women. – 1923.
The world’s first anthrax epidemic begins in Ekaterinburg, Russia, now Sverdlosk. By the time it ended six weeks later, 62 individuals were dead. Another 32 survived serious illness. The farmers in Ekaterinburg, which the town was known in Soviet times, suffered livestock losses from the epidemic. – 1979.
Major League Baseball players end a 232-day strike, which began August 12, 1994 and led to the cancellation of the 1994 postseason, including the World Series. – 1995.
April 3
The first Pony Express mail, traveling by horse and rider relay teams, simultaneously leaves St. Joseph, Mo., and Sacramento, Calif.. Ten days later, April 13, the westbound rider and mail packet completed the approximately 1,800-mile journey and arrives in Sacramento to beat the eastbound packet’s arrival in St. Joseph by two days to set a new standard for speedy mail delivery. – 1860.
President Harry S Truman signs off on legislation to establish the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948, more popularly known as the Marshall Plan. The act eventually provided more than $12 billion, approximately $114 billion in today’s dollars, of assistance to aid in the economic recovery of Western Europe. -1948.
Over 16, hours 148 tornadoes hit the United States heartland. By the time the deadly storm ended, 330 persons died. It was the largest grouping of tornadoes recorded in its time, and affected 11 states, including Illinois, and Ontario, Canada. At any one moment during the storm, there were as many as 15 tornadoes touching the ground. – 1974.
April 4
Just after 6 p.m. April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn.. The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He was 39 years old. – 1968.
April 5
Two small towns in Mississippi and Georgia are devastated by tornadoes which kill 200 residents in one of the deadliest spates of tornadoes in United States history. A total of 466 persons were killed over four days of nearly continuous twisters. Another 3,500 were injured. – 1936
Columnist Victor Riesel, a crusader against labor racketeers, was blinded in New York City when a hired assailant threw sulfuric acid in his face. – 1956.