YEARS AGO FOR FEB. 4

Today is Sunday, Feb. 4, the 35th day of 2018. There are 330 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

A.D. 211: Roman Emperor Lucius Septimius Severus dies at age 65.

1783: Britain’s King George III proclaims a formal cessation of hostilities in the American Revolutionary War.

1789: Electors choose George Washington to be the first president of the United States.

1861: Delegates from six Southern states that had recently seceded from the Union meet in Montgomery, Ala., to form the Confederate States of America.

1938: The Thornton Wilder play “Our Town” opens on Broadway.

Walt Disney’s animated feature “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” opens in general U.S. release.

1941: The United Service Organizations (USO) comes into existence.

1948: The island nation of Ceylon – now Sri Lanka – becomes an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth.

1962: A rare conjunction of the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn occurs.

1974: Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, 19, is kidnapped in Berkeley, Calif., by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army.

1983: Pop singer-musician Karen Carpenter dies in Downey, Calif., at age 32.

1987: Pianist Liberace dies at his Palm Springs, Calif., home at age 67.

1997: A civil jury in Santa Monica, Calif., finds O.J. Simpson liable for the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

2004: The Massachusetts high court declares that gay couples are entitled to nothing less than marriage, and that Vermont-style civil unions would not suffice.

The social networking website Facebook has its beginnings as Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg launches “Thefacebook.”

2008:: President George W. Bush proposes a record $3.1 trillion budget that includes huge deficits.

Harry Richard Landis, the next-to-last surviving U.S. veteran of World War I, dies near Tampa, Fla., at age 108. (The last surviving U.S. World War I vet, Frank Buckles, died in February 2011.)

2013: President Barack Obama signs a bill temporarily raising the government’s $16.4 trillion borrowing limit, averting a default.

2017: The Justice Department appeals a judge’s order temporarily blocking President Donald Trump’s refugee and immigration ban.

VINDICATOR FILES

1993: Mayor Patrick J. Ungaro suggests to City Council that Youngstown designate land near Southside, St. Elizabeth and Youngstown Osteopathic hospitals as urban renewal zones, which would make it easier for the hospitals to expand.

Major League Baseball suspends Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott for one year and fines her $25,000 for making racial slurs.

Poland Township Chairman James R. Scharville says township trustees will never allow annexation of township land to Poland.

1978: Operations at the General Motors plant in Lordstown will be suspended for three days because severe weather has cut the supply of parts.

Curtis McCullum, labor activist who was found innocent of trying to intimidate a public official in 1977, is named by Youngstown Mayor J. Phillip Richley as deputy director of the Community Development Agency.

Martha, one of two bald eagles at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, is in her natural environment again after being kept inside since last spring, when vandals slaughtered 12 birds. Security has been increased.

1968: Nicholas Paraska, associate professor of civil engineering at Youngstown State University, is appointed dean of its Technical and Community College.

East Ohio Gas Co. says gas prices are sharply higher because from Dec. 21 to Jan 29 the mean temperature was 21.8 degrees, six degrees lower than a year earlier.

Jeffrey Ruse, 16, a sophomore at Chaney High, receives his Eagle award during a Troop 146 court of honor at Wickliffe Presbyterian Church.

1943: The question of testing the legality of a city ordinance authorizing the purchase of a fire truck with civilian-defense funds is referred to the executive committee of the new Youngstown Council of Civilian Defense.

Leo “Dutch” Manley says a city policeman escorted him every day from his bookie joint on East Commerce Street to the bank with day’s receipts. He expected it as a taxpayer.

Friends of the Youngs- town College library open a campaign to raise $5,000 to buy books.