This Day in History

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February 4

Today Missouri and California celebrate Rosa Parks Day.

Today is also World Cancer Day, so...Fuck cancer.

This day marks the approximate mid-point of winter, in the Northern Hemisphere, and the approximate mid-point of summer in the Southern Hemisphere.


Events

1555 – John Rogers is burned at the stake, becoming the first English Protestant martyr under Mary I of England.

1703 – In Edo (now Tokyo), 46 of the Forty-seven Ronin commit seppuku (ritual suicide) as recompense for avenging their master's death.

1789 – George Washington is unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College.

1846 – The first Mormon pioneers make their exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, westward towards Salt Lake Valley.

1941 – The United Service Organization (USO) is created to entertain American troops.

1945 – World War II: The Yalta Conference between the "Big Three" (Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin) opens at the Livadia Palace in the Crimea.

1974 – M62 coach bombing: The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) explodes a bomb on a bus carrying off-duty British Armed Forces personnel in Yorkshire, England. Nine soldiers and three civilians are killed.

1977 – A Chicago Transit Authority elevated train rear-ends another and derails, killing 11 and injuring 180, the worst accident in the agency's history.

1992 – A coup d'état is led by Hugo Chávez against Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez.

1996 – Major snowstorm paralyzes Midwestern United States, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and ties all-time record low temperature at −26 °F (−32.2 °C).

1997 – En route to Lebanon, two Israeli Sikorsky CH-53 troop-transport helicopters collide in mid-air over northern Galilee, Israel killing 73.

1999 – Unarmed West African immigrant Amadou Diallo is shot 41 times by four plainclothes New York City police officers on an unrelated stake-out, inflaming race relations in the city.

2004 – Facebook, a mainstream online social networking site, is founded by Mark Zuckerberg.

Births

1895 – Nigel Bruce ('Dr. Watson' in Sherlock Holmes movies); 1900 – Jacques Prévert; 1902 – Charles Lindbergh; 1906 – Clyde Tombaugh (discovered planet Pluto); 1912 – Byron Nelson; 1913 – Rosa Parks; 1915 – William Talman; 1918 – Ida Lupino; 1923 – Conrad Bain (Diff'rent Strokes); 1936 – David Brenner; 1940 – George A. Romero; 1941 – John Steel; 1947 – Dan Quayle (44th POTUS); 1948 – Alice Cooper; 1949 – Michael Beck; 1951 – Patrick Bergin; 1951 – Phil Ehart; 1959 – Lawrence Taylor; 1962 – Clint Black; 1970 – Gabrielle Anwar; 1973 – Oscar De La Hoya; 1975 – Natalie Imbruglia; 1977 – Gavin DeGraw

Deaths

211 – Septimius Severus; 1555 – John Rogers; 1894 – Adolphe Sax; 1975 – Louis Jordan; 1982 – Alex Harvey; 1983 – Karen Carpenter; 1987 – Liberace; 1992 – John Dehner; 2005 – Ossie Davis; 2006 – Betty Friedan; 2007 – Barbara McNair; 2016 – Dave Mirra; 2016 – Maurice White