Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 4

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 * 960 – Emperor Taizu (pictured) came to power, initiating the Song dynasty of China that eventually lasted for more than three centuries.
 * 1797 – The Riobamba earthquake, the most powerful in Ecuador's history, devastated Riobamba and many other cities, causing at least 6,000 casualties.
 * 1801 – John Marshall, whose court opinions helped lay the basis for U.S. constitutional law and made the Supreme Court a coequal branch of government, took office as chief justice.
 * 1820 – Chilean War of Independence: Chilean forces captured the city of Valdivia.
 * 1899 – The Philippine–American War began when an American soldier, under orders to keep insurgents away from his unit's encampment, fired on a Filipino soldier in Manila.
 * 1945 – World War II: U.S. forces liberated the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila, the largest Japanese internment camp in the Philippines.
 * 1974 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army bombed a motor coach carrying off-duty British Armed Forces personnel and their family members, killing twelve people.
 * 1998 – An earthquake registering 5.9 MW struck northern Afghanistan, triggering landslides that killed over 2,300 people and destroyed around 15,000 homes.
 * 1999 – The Panamanian-flagged freighter New Carissa ran aground near Coos Bay, Oregon, causing one of the worst oil spills in the state's history.
 * 2008 – The London low emission zone, governing what types of vehicles may enter Greater London, came into operation.
 * 2015 – Shortly after takeoff from Taipei Songshan Airport, the crew of TransAsia Airways Flight 235 shut down the wrong engine in response to a flameout, leading to a crash that resulted in 43 deaths.
 * Born/died this day: | Septimius Severus |d|211| Rabanus Maurus |d|856| Ceolnoth |d|870| Carl Michael Bellman |b|1740| Alexis Soyer |b|1810|  Oliver Ames |b|1831| Étienne Desmarteau |b|1873|  Betty Friedan |b|1921| Ken Thompson |b|1943| Jenny Shipley |b|1952| Karen Carpenter |d|1983| Daniel arap Moi |d|2020| Hy Cohen |d|2021

February 4: Lichun begins in East Asia (2024)


 * 1169 – A strong earthquake struck the eastern coast of Sicily, causing at least 15,000 deaths.


 * 1969 – Yasser Arafat (pictured) was elected chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
 * 1974 – American newspaper heiress and socialite Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, which she later joined, in one of the most well-known cases of Stockholm syndrome.
 * 1999 – Amadou Diallo, a 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea, was shot and killed by four New York City Police Department plain-clothed officers, prompting outrage both within and outside the city.