Today is Saturday, Feb. 4, the 35th day of 2017. There are 330 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On Feb. 4, 1789, electors chose George Washington to be the first president of the United States.
On this date:
In 1783, Britain's King George III proclaimed a formal cessation of hostilities in the American Revolutionary War.
In 1861, delegates from six southern states that had recently seceded from the Union met in Montgomery, Alabama, to form the Confederate States of America.
In 1932, New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt opened the Winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid.
In 1941, the United Service Organizations (USO) came into existence.
In 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin began a wartime conference at Yalta.
In 1962, a rare conjunction of the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn occurred.
In 1974, newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, 19, was kidnapped in Berkeley, California, by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army.
In 1977, eleven people were killed when two Chicago Transit Authority trains collided on an elevated track.
In 1983, pop singer-musician Karen Carpenter died in Downey, California, at age 32.
In 1987, pianist Liberace died at his Palm Springs, California, home at age 67.
In 1997, a civil jury in Santa Monica, California, found O.J. Simpson liable for the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
In 2004, the Massachusetts high court declared that gay couples were entitled to nothing less than marriage, and that Vermont-style civil unions would not suffice. The social networking website Facebook had its beginnings as Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook."
