February 4

February 4 in history:

• 211, Roman Emperor Septimius Severus dies, leaving the Roman Empire in the hands of his two quarrelsome sons, Caracalla and Geta

• 960, the coronation of Zhao Kuangyin as Emperor Taizu of Song, initiating the Song Dynasty period of China that would last more than three centuries

• 1454, in the Thirteen Years' War, the Secret Council of the Prussian Confederation sends a formal act of disobedience to the Grand Master

• 1783, Britain declared a formal cessation of hostilities with its former colonies, the United States of America

• 1789, George Washington is unanimously elected to be the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College. The happens in 1792

• 1825, the Ohio Legislature authorizes the construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal and the Miami and Erie Canal

• 1859, Codex Sinaiticus discovered in Egypt

• 1899, the Philippine-American War begins

• 1915, Germany establishes a submarine blockade around the UK and declares any vessel in it a legitimate target

• 1936, Radium E becomes the first radioactive element to be made synthetically

• 1943, during World War II: Battle of Stalingrad ends

• 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin began a wartime conference at Yalta

• 1957, USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, logs her 60,000th nautical mile, matching the endurance of the fictional Nautilus described in Jules Verne's novel "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"

• 1974, the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnaps Patty Hearst in Berkeley, California

• 1976, in Guatemala and Honduras an earthquake kills more than 22,000

• 1991, the Baseball Hall of Fame votes to ban Pete Rose

• 1996, major snowstorm paralyzes Midwestern United States, Milwaukee, Wisconsin ties all-time record low temperature at -26 degrees F (-32.2 degrees C)

• 1998, while in Belgium, Bill Gates is assaulted by a Belgian man and hit in the face with a cream pie