From Historynet: Today in History February 4

786             Harun al-Rashid  succeeds his older brother the Abbasid Caliph al-Hadi as Caliph of Baghdad.

1194          Richard I , King of England, is freed from captivity in Germany.

1508          The Proclamation of Trent is made.

1787          Shay’s Rebellion, an uprising of debt-ridden Massachusetts farmers against the new U.S. government, fails.

1789          George Washington  is unanimously elected the first president of the United States by the Electoral College. He will be unanimously elected again in 1792 and will remain the only U.S. president in history to receive the totality of electoral votes. 

1795          France abolishes slavery in her territories and confers citizenship on the slaves.

1889          Harry Longabaugh  is released from Sundance Prison in Wyoming, thereby acquiring the famous nickname, “the Sundance Kid.”

1899          After an exchange of gunfire, fighting breaks out between American troops and Filipinos near Manila, sparking the Philippine-American War

1906          The New York Police Department begins fingerprint identification.

1909          California law segregates Caucasian and Japanese schoolchildren.

1915          Germany decrees British waters as part of the war zone; all ships to be sunk without warning.

1923          French troops take the territories of Offenburg, Appenweier and Buhl in the Ruhr as a part of the agreement ending World War I.

1932          Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt  inaugurates the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, N.Y.

1941          The United Service Organizations (U.S.O.) is formed to entertain armed forces members and their families.

1944          The Japanese attack the Indian Seventh Army in Burma.

1945          The Big Three, American, British and Soviet leaders, meet in Yalta to discuss the war aims.

1966          The Senate Foreign Relations Committee begins televised hearings on the Vietnam War.

1974          Newspaper heiress Patty Hearst  is kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, beginning one of the most bizarre cases in FBI history.

1980          Syria withdraws its peacekeeping force in Beirut.

1986          The U.S. Post Office issues a commemorative stamp featuring Sojourner Truth.