February 4, Heiress Patricia Hearst kidnapped
Today is Wednesday, February 4, the 35th day of the year 2026. There are 330 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On February 4, 1974, newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, 19, was kidnapped in California by the Radical Symbionese Liberation Army. Hearst was filmed participating in a bank robbery with the extremist group in April and was later convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to seven years in prison. (President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence and she was later pardoned.)
Also on this date:
In 1789, voters unanimously chose George Washington as the first president of the United States.
In 1801, John Marshall became Chief Justice of the United States, a position he held for 34 years.
In 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin held a war conference in Yalta.
In 1976, more than 23,000 people died when a severe 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck Guatemala.
In 1997, a civil jury in Santa Monica, California, found OJ Simpson responsible for the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, ordering Simpson to pay $33.5 million to the victims’ families.
In 2004, Facebook got its start when Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched “TheFacebook”.
In 2013, British scientists announced that skeletal remains they discovered during an excavation beneath a car park in Leicester, England, were, without reasonable doubt, the remains of the 15th-century monarch, King Richard III.
In 2023, the United States shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean, claiming it was equipped with high-tech equipment for a military-linked aerial surveillance program. China has denied the balloon was used to spy on sensitive North American military sites, insisting the flyby was an accident involving a weather balloon.
Today’s birthdays:
- Former Argentine President Isabel Peron is 95 years old.
- Rock singer Alice Cooper is 78 years old.
- Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is 73 years old.
- Football Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor is 67 years old.
- Country singer Clint Black is 64 years old.
- Boxing Hall of Famer Oscar De La Hoya is 53 years old.
- Singer Natalie Imbruglia is 51 years old.
- Rapper Cam’ron is 50 years old.
- Singer-songwriter Gavin DeGraw is 49 years old.
- Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Carly Patterson is 38 years old.
- Actor Edvin Ryding is 23 years old.
