Today in History
4 February
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4 February |
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| 211 Lucius Septimius Severus, the Roman emperor responsible for making the empire's government a military monarchy, died. | ||
| 1194 Richard I Lion Hearted pays Leopold O Fenrik VI's ransom of 100,000 | ||
| 1465 French van Brederode, leader of Hoeksen was born | ||
| 1508 Maximilian I assumes imperial title without being crowned | ||
| 1575 Pierre de B‚rulle, French cardinal was born | ||
| 1586 Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, becomes governor of Netherland | ||
| 1600 Tycho Brahe & Johannes Kepler meet for 1st time near Prague | ||
| 1615 Giovanni Battista della Porta, an Italian physicist, philosopher and writer on the properties of lenses, died. | ||
| 1620 Prince Bethlen Gbor signs peace with emperor Ferdinand II | ||
| 1657 Oliver Cromwell grants residency to Luis Caravajal | ||
| 1699 350 rebellious Streltsi executed in Moscow | ||
| 1782 British garrison surrenders to French & Spanish fleet | ||
| 1783 Worst quake in 8 years kills some 50,000 (Calabria, Italy) | ||
| 1783 England officially proclaimed an end to hostilities in America. | ||
| 1787 1st Anglican bishops of NY & Pennsylvania consecrated in London | ||
| 1787 Shays' Rebellion, an uprising of Massachusetts farmers led by Daniel Shays, ended with defeat at Petersham. | ||
| 1789 Presidential electors met and chose George Washington as America's first president. | ||
| 1794 French National Convention proclaims abolishment of slavery | ||
| 1797 Earthquake in Quito, Ecuador kills 41,000 | ||
| 1819 Joshua Norton, SF, Norton I, emperor of USA was born | ||
| 1824 J W Goodrich introduces rubber galoshes to public | ||
| 1855 Soldiers shoot Jewish families in Coro, Venezuela | ||
| 1864 24th Amendment abolishes Poll tax | ||
| 1865 Hawaiian Board of Education formed | ||
| 1865 Robert E Lee is named commander-in-chief of Confederate Army | ||
| 1874 The Battle of Kumasi ended the Ashanti War between Britain and Ghana. | ||
| 1875 Princess Louise marries Prince Philip von Saksen-Coburg-Gotha in Belgium | ||
| 1892 Ugo Betti, Italian playwright was born | ||
| 1895 1st rolling lift bridge opens, Chicago | ||
| 1904 The Russo-Japanese war began when Japan laid siege to Port Arthur. | ||
| 1913 National Institute of Arts & Letters founded | ||
| 1914 US Congress approves Burnett-anti-immigration law | ||
| 1915 Experiments to find cause of pellagra begin at Miss Penitentiary | ||
| 1917 Belgium Council of Flanders established | ||
| 1919 City of Bremen's Soviet Republic overthrown | ||
| 1920 1st flight from London to South Africa takes-off (1« months) | ||
| 1924 1st Winter Olympic games close at Chamonix France | ||
| 1924 Mahatma Gandhi was released after spending two years in jail in Bombay. | ||
| 1927 British driver Malcolm Campbell broke the world land speed record in his car Bluebird, driving at 174.224 miles per hour. | ||
| 1932 Japanese troop occupy Harbin, Manchuria | ||
| 1936 1st radioactive substance produced synthetically (radium E) | ||
| 1938 Adolf Hitler became Germany's war minister and Joachim von Ribbentrop took over foreign affairs. | ||
| 1939 Glenn Cunningham (top miler) says 4-min mile beyond human effort | ||
| 1941 British tanks occupy Maus Libya | ||
| 1941 United Service Organization (USO) founded | ||
| 1942 Clinton Pierce becomes 1st US general wounded in action in WW II | ||
| 1944 US 7th Infantry Division captures Kwajalein | ||
| 1945 Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin met at Yalta in the Crimea to discuss plans for the defeat of the Axis powers and to decide on the post-war future. | ||
| 1948 Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) declares independence from UK | ||
| 1949 Failed assassination attempt on Shah of Persia | ||
| 1957 1st electric portable typewriter placed on sale (Syracuse NY) | ||
| 1958 Hall of Fame fails to elect anyone for 1st time since 1950 | ||
| 1962 Russian newspaper Izvestia reports baseball is an old Russian game | ||
| 1962 Francisco Orlich Bolmarich was elected president of Costa Rica. | ||
| 1964 Amendment 24 outlaws poll tax | ||
| 1966 An All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 jet aircraft crashed in Tokyo Bay, killing 133 passengers and crew. | ||
| 1969 Yassar Arafats takes over as chairman of PLO | ||
| 1971 Apollo 14 lander Antares lands on Moon (Shepard & Mitchell) | ||
| 1971 British carmaker Rolls Royce declared itself bankrupt. | ||
| 1971 Governament exhibit under construction collapses, kills 65 in Brazil | ||
| 1971 National Guard mobilized to quell rioting in Wilmington NC | ||
| 1972 Zambian President Kenneth Kuanda banned the opposition United Progressive Party and arrested its leader, Simon Kapepwe, together with more than 120 members. | ||
| 1972 6th round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks ends in Vienna Austria | ||
| 1972 Sen Strom Thurmond suggests John Lennon be deported | ||
| 1973 Islanders & Sabres had a penalty free game | ||
| 1973 Reshef, Israel's missile boat, unveiled | ||
| 1974 Benzine rationing ends in Netherlands | ||
| 1974 Gas rationing ends in Netherlands | ||
| 1974 Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of the late William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. | ||
| 1974 Grenada achieved independence within the British Commonwealth. | ||
| 1976 12th Winter Olympic games opens in Innsbruck, Austria | ||
| 1976 An earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale and resulting mudslides caused the deaths of 23,000 people just north of Guatemala City; 1.5 million people were made homeless. | ||
| 1976 In Mozambique, the capital, Lourenco Marques, was renamed Maputo. | ||
| 1977 Elevated train jumps track, crashes onto Chicago st (11 die, 200 hurt) | ||
| 1978 Junius Jayawardene was sworn in as Sri Lanka's first president. | ||
| 1980 Bani Sadr sworn in as premier of Iran | ||
| 1982 Indoor distance record for a paper airplane (47m) Tacoma Wash | ||
| 1982 In Britain, Laker Airways, pioneer of cheap transatlantic air fares, collapsed. | ||
| 1983 Jos‚ Happart becomes mayor of Voeren Belgium | ||
| 1983 Karen Carpenter, vocalist with the internationally successful brother and sister duo The Carpenters, died of anorexia nervosa. | ||
| 1985 Naval exercises canceled when US refuses to tell NZ of nuclear weapons | ||
| 1986 Israeli fighters intercept Libyan liner (passenger plane) | ||
| 1987 Stars & Stripes beats Australia's Kookaburra 3, sweeps America's Cup | ||
| 1987 Liberace, U.S. pianist and showman, died. | ||
| 1988 Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega indicted on drug charges | ||
| 1990 Nine Israeli tourists and two Egyptian guards were killed when masked assailants opened fire on a bus en route to Cairo. | ||
| 1992 Loyal troops put down an attempted coup against President Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela. | ||
| 1993 Admiral Studeman, ends term as acting director of CIA | ||
| 1993 Russian space agency tests a 82' wide space mirror | ||
| 1994 20 die in armed assault on mosque in Khartum Sudan | ||
| 1994 Mortar bombs killed nine people in a food line in Serb-besieged Sarajevo. | ||
| 1994 Polish Finance Minister Marek Borowski resigned after clashing with Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak. | ||
| 1996 A Colombian cargo plane crashed into homes near the Paraguayan capital Asuncion, killing at least 22 people. | ||
| 1997 73 Israeli soldiers were killed when two military helicopters collided in midair in a storm in northern Israel. | ||
| 1997 16 months after O.J. Simpson was cleared of murder charges, a civil trial jury blamed him for the killings of his ex-wife and her friend and ordered him to pay $8.5 million in compensatory damages. | ||
| 1998 Bill Gates gets a pie thrown in his face in Brussels Belgium | ||
C.H. OSTFELD INC.