Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally
shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room
at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. 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 only 39 years old.

The balcony of the Lorraine Motel, Mulberry Street, Memphis, Tenn., April 6, 1968, just after the Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr.’s assassination.

Martin Luther King Jr.  (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)

Marlon Brando Jr. (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004)

Considered one of the most influential actors of the
20th century, Marlon Brando received numerous
accolades throughout his career which spanned
six decades, including two Academy Awards, two
Golden Globe Awards, and three British Academy
Film Awards. Brando was also an activist for many
causes, notably the civil rights movement and
various Native American movements.

Painting depicting the first Pony Express rider arriving in
Sacramento.

On April 3, 1860, the first Pony Express mail, traveling by horse
and rider relay teams, simultaneously left St. Joseph, Missouri,
and Sacramento, California. Ten days later, on April 13, the
westbound rider and mail packet completed the approximately
1,800-mile journey and arrived in Sacramento, beating the
eastbound packet’s arrival in St. Joseph by two days and setting
a new standard for speedy mail delivery. Although ultimately
short-lived and unprofitable, the Pony Express captivated
America’s imagination and helped win federal aid for a more
economical overland postal system. It also contributed to the
economy of the towns on its route and served the mail-service
needs of the American West in the days before the telegraph
or an efficient transcontinental railroad.

The world’s first anthrax epidemic began in Ekaterinburg, Russia
(now Sverdlovsk), on April 2, 1979. By the time it ended six weeks
later, 62 people were dead. Another 32 survived serious illness. Ekaterinburg, as the town was known in Soviet times, also
suffered livestock losses from the epidemic.

MIKE GRACIA

Woodrow Wilson before Congress in 1917.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson
(December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924)