#TodayInHistory – February 4

February 4 – Some important events on this day

211 👉🏼 Roman Emperor Septimius Severus dies, leaving the Roman Empire in the hands of his two quarrelsome sons, Caracalla and Geta
960 👉🏼 Coronation of Zhao Kuangyin as Emperor Taizu of the Song, initiating three centuries of Song Dynasty dominance in southern China
1789 👉🏼 1st US electoral college chooses George Washington as President and John Adams as Vice-President
1797 👉🏼 Earthquake in Quito, Ecuador kills 41,000
1826 👉🏼 The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper is published.

1859 👉🏼 One of the oldest known copies of the Bible, “The Codex Sinaiticus” (Sinai Bible), is seen in Egypt by Constantin von Tischendorf who takes the manuscript home with him.
One of the world’s oldest known copies of the Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus (Sinai Bible), was found in the Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, Egypt, in the mid-19th century by German biblical scholar Constantin von Tischendorf. The bible dates from the 4th century, probably between 330-360 AD, and is written in Greek.
Sinaiticus is not the oldest Bible ever discovered – that belongs to the Codex Vaticanus, which was written in Greek around 300-325 AD, and currently resides in the Vatican.
Large portions of the Sinai Bible’s Old Testament are missing from the original parchments, but it has a complete version of the New Testament. The bible’s early history is not known for sure; some historians have posited was written in the West, probably in Rome; others contend it was written in Egypt or Palestine. Some historians have suggested that the bible was written on the orders of Emperor Constantine the Great, after his conversion to Christianity (one of his Fifty Bibles) but others have rejected this assertion.
The bible is an invaluable historical resource for Biblical and linguistic scholars, along with three other extant copies of the Bible written in Greek.

1865 👉🏼 Robert E. Lee is named general-in-chief of Confederate forces
1936 👉🏼 1st radioactive substance produced synthetically (radium E)
1938 👉🏼 Disney releases “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”

1945 👉🏼 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin meet at Yalta in the Crimea to discuss the final phase of World War II.
The big three allied leaders, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin met at Yalta in February 1945.
They made final plans for the defeat of Nazi Germany, their joint occupation of Germany and for post-war Europe.

1948 👉🏼 Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) declares independence from UK
1962 👉🏼 Russian newspaper Izvestia reports baseball is an old Russian game
1969 👉🏼 The Palestine National Congress appoints Yasser Arafat chairman of the PLO
1988 👉🏼 Panamanian General Manuel Noriega indicted by US federal grand jury for drug trafficking and racketeering
2004 👉🏼 Mark Zuckerberg launches Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room
2014 👉🏼 Same-sex marriage is legalized in Scotland