TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Monday, Feb. 4, the 35th day of 2019. There are 330 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY

On Feb. 4, 1974, newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, 19, was kidnapped in Berkeley, California, by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

• Actor Jerry Adler is 90. • Former Vice President Dan Quayle is 72. • Rock singer Alice Cooper is 71. • Football Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor is 60. • Country singer Clint Black is 57. • TV personality Nicolle Wallace is 47. • Olympic gold medal boxer Oscar De La Hoya is 46. • Singer Natalie Imbruglia is 44. • Rock singer Gavin DeGraw is 42. • Olympic gold medal gymnast-turned-singer Carly Patterson is 31.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.” — Edith Wharton, American author (1862-1937).

ON THIS DATE

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 1913, Rosa Parks, a black woman whose 1955 refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus to a white man sparked a civil rights revolution, was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee.

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 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.