Today is Sunday, Feb. 4, the 35th day of 2018. There are 330 days left in the year.
On Feb. 4, 1783, Britain's King George III proclaimed a formal cessation of hostilities in the American Revolutionary War.
In A.D. 211, Roman Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus died at age 65.
In 1789, electors chose George Washington to be the first president of the United States.
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 1938, the Thornton Wilder play "Our Town" opened on Broadway. Walt Disney's animated feature "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" opened in general U.S. release.
In 1941, the United Service Organizations (USO) came into existence.
In 1948, the island nation of Ceylon — now Sri Lanka — became an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth.
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 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."