Feb 4 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on February 4:

1904 – The Russo-Japanese war began when Japan laid siege to Port Arthur.

1935 – Walter Neusel defeats Jack Petersen at heavyweight fight.

1945 – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet leader Josef Stalin met at Yalta in the Crimea to discuss plans for the defeat of the Axis powers and decide on the post-war world.

1948 – Ceylon gains independence with Sir Henry Monck-Mason Moore as its first Governor-General.

1974 – Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of U.S. newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

1976 – An earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale and resulting mudslides killed 23,000 people near Guatemala City.

1999 – Daredevil Robbie Knievel successfully jumps his motorcycle in a rooftop to rooftop leap at the 16-story twin hotel towers of the Jockey Club, in Las Vegas.

2004 – Facebook is founded by Mark Zuckerberg.

2007 – Singer and actress Barbara McNair, who starred opposite Elvis Presley and Sidney Poitier and became one of the first black women to host her own television variety show, died aged 72.

2018 – South Carolina Amtrak train crash.