Today in History: February 4, Heiress Patricia Hearst kidnapped

Today is Wednesday, Feb. 4, the 35th day of 2026. There are 330 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Feb. 4, 1974, newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, 19, was kidnapped in California by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army. Hearst was caught on camera participating in a bank robbery with the extremist group that April and subsequently found guilty 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, electors unanimously chose George Washington to be the first president of the United States.

In 1801, John Marshall took office as chief justice of the United States, a position he would hold for 34 years.

In 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin began a wartime conference at Yalta.

In 1976, more than 23,000 people died when a severe earthquake struck Guatemala with a magnitude of 7.5.

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, ordering Simpson to pay $33.5 million to the victims’ families.

In 2004, Facebook had its beginnings as Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launched “TheFacebook.”

In 2013, British scientists announced that skeletal remains they had discovered during an excavation beneath a Leicester, England parking lot were, beyond reasonable doubt, the remains of 15th century monarch King Richard III.

In 2023, the U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean, saying it was equipped with high-tech gear for a military-linked aerial surveillance program. China denied the balloon was used for spying on sensitive North American military sites, insisting the flyover was an accident involving a weather balloon.

Today’s birthdays:

• Former Argentine President Isabel Peron is 95.
• Rock singer Alice Cooper is 78.
• Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is 73.
• Football Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor is 67.
• Country singer Clint Black is 64.
• Boxing Hall of Famer Oscar De La Hoya is 53.
• Singer Natalie Imbruglia is 51.
• Rapper Cam’ron is 50.
• Singer-songwriter Gavin DeGraw is 49.
• Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Carly Patterson is 38.
• Actor Edvin Ryding is 23.