04 February History
- 786 - Harun al-Rashid succeeds his older brother the Abbasid Caliph al-Hadi as Caliph of Baghdad.
- 1194 - Richard I, King of England, is freed from captivity in Germany.
- 1508 - The Proclamation of Trent is made.
- 1787 - Shay's Rebellion, an uprising of debt-ridden Massachusetts farmers against the new U.S. government, fails.
- 1795 - France abolishes slavery in her territories and confers slaves to citizens.
- 1889 - Harry Longabaugh is released from Sundance Prison in Wyoming, thereby acquiring the famous nickname, "the Sundance Kid."
- 1899 - After an exchange of gunfire, fighting breaks out between American troops and Filipinos near Manila, sparking the Philippine-American War
- 1906 - The New York Police Department begins finger print identification.
- 1909 - California law segregates Caucasian and Japanese schoolchildren.
- 1915 - Germany decrees British waters as part of the war zone; all ships to be sunk without warning.
- 1923 - French troops take the territories of Offenburg, Appenweier and Buhl in the Ruhr as a part of the agreement ending World War I.
- 1932 - Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurates the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, N.Y.
- 1941 - The United Service Organization (U.S.O.) is formed to cater to armed forces and defense industries.
- 1944 - The Japanese attack the Indian Seventh Army in Burma.
- 1945 - The Big Three, American, British and Soviet leaders, meet in Yalta to discuss the war aims.
- 1966 - Senate Foreign Relations Committee begins televised hearings on the Vietnam War.
- 1980 - Syria withdraws its peacekeeping force in Beirut.
- 1986 - The U.S. Post Office issues a commemorative stamp featuring Sojourner Truth.
04 February Birthdays
- 1881 - Fernand Leger, French painter.
- 1900 - Jacques Prevert, French poet, screenwriter (The Visitors of the Evening, The Children of Paradise).
- 1902 - Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic.
- 1906 - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Protestant theologian.
- 1906 - Clyde Tombaugh, astronomer, discovered Pluto.
- 1913 - Rosa Lee Parks, civil rights activist.
- 1921 - Betty Friedan, writer, feminist, founded the National Organization of Women in 1966.
- 1925 - Russell Hoban, artist and writer (Bedtime for Frances, The Mouse and His Child).
- 1932 - Robert Coover, novelist & short story writer.
- 1947 - Dan Quayle, vice president under President George H.W. Bush.