February 4 in History

Ohio's legislature authorized the construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal and the Miami and Erie Canal on February 4, 1825, launching one of the most ambitious public works projects in the young republic's history. The canals would connect Lake Erie on the northern border to the Ohio River on the southern, opening a continuous water route from New York City to the Mississippi Valley via the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes. Before the canals, shipping goods from the interior of Ohio to eastern markets was prohibitively expensive. Overland transportation cost roughly $125 per ton per hundred miles. Canal barges reduced that to $4 per ton per hundred miles, a reduction of over 96 percent. The impact on Ohio's economy was transformative. Construction began immediately and employed thousands of Irish and German immigrants who dug the channels by hand through forests, swamps, and limestone. The Ohio and Erie Canal, running 309 miles from Cleveland to Portsmouth, opened in stages between 1827 and 1832. The Miami and Erie Canal, connecting Cincinnati to Toledo, was completed in 1845. Towns along the canal routes grew rapidly. Akron, which barely existed before the canal, became a thriving commercial hub. Cleveland evolved from a small lakeside settlement into a major port. Cincinnati strengthened its position as the commercial capital of the Ohio Valley. The canals triggered a population boom: Ohio's population doubled between 1820 and 1840, from roughly 580,000 to over 1.5 million. By the 1850s, however, the railroads were rendering canals obsolete. The last commercial traffic on the Ohio and Erie Canal ceased in 1913 after a devastating flood. Today, portions of the former canal routes are preserved as national and state parks.

French President Jacques Chirac and UNESCO Director General Koichiro Matsuura signed the Charter of Paris at the World Summit Against Cancer, establishing February 4 as World Cancer Day. The initiative created a permanent global platform for cancer awareness and research coordination, uniting governments and health organizations in a shared commitment to reduce cancer mortality. The summit took place on February 4, 2000, at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, bringing together heads of state, health ministers, oncologists, and patient advocacy groups from dozens of countries. The charter outlined a framework for international cooperation in cancer prevention, early detection, treatment access, and palliative care. At the time of signing, cancer was responsible for approximately 6.2 million deaths per year worldwide, a figure that was projected to rise dramatically as populations aged and developing countries adopted Western dietary and lifestyle patterns. The establishment of World Cancer Day gave the global cancer community a fixed annual focal point for fundraising campaigns, public awareness initiatives, and policy advocacy. The day is now observed in over 170 countries, with the Union for International Cancer Control coordinating activities under multi-year thematic campaigns. Cancer incidence has indeed risen substantially since 2000, with approximately 20 million new cases diagnosed annually by 2025, but survival rates for many common cancers have improved dramatically due to earlier detection, targeted therapies, and immunotherapy breakthroughs that were in their earliest stages when the charter was signed.

German extortionist Klaus-Peter Sabotta received a life sentence on February 5, 2000, for sabotaging railway lines and attempted murder in a scheme to extort Deutsche Bahn, Germany's national railway operator. Sabotta had placed steel cables, concrete blocks, and other obstructions on high-speed rail lines across northern Germany between 1998 and 1999, demanding millions of Deutschmarks to stop the attacks. His sabotage derailed at least one train and endangered thousands of passengers on high-speed routes where trains traveled at over 200 kilometers per hour. The investigation was one of the largest in German criminal history, involving federal police, state criminal offices, and intelligence agencies. Sabotta was identified through a combination of forensic evidence and surveillance work after authorities narrowed the suspect pool through geographic profiling of the attack sites. His trial exposed vulnerabilities in the German rail network's physical security infrastructure, which had been designed to protect against weather and mechanical failure but not deliberate sabotage. In the aftermath, Deutsche Bahn invested significantly in surveillance systems along vulnerable track sections, implemented new inspection protocols, and established closer coordination with federal law enforcement. The case also prompted legislative changes that increased penalties for attacks on transportation infrastructure. Sabotta's attacks occurred during a period of heightened concern about infrastructure security in Europe and contributed to broader discussions about protecting critical transportation networks from both criminal and terrorist threats.

Septimius Severus died in York, England, on February 4, 211 AD, after spending his final years campaigning in Britain and trying to conquer Scotland. His last words to his sons Caracalla and Geta were reported by the historian Cassius Dio: "Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men." They obeyed the last two parts and ignored the first. Within a year of their father's death, Caracalla had his brother Geta murdered. The killing happened in their mother Julia Domna's own apartments, reportedly in her arms. Geta was twenty-two. Caracalla then ordered the execution of everyone who had supported his brother. Estimates run to 20,000 people, including Geta's friends, political allies, and anyone who had spoken favorably of him. His name was chiseled off public monuments across the empire in a systematic damnatio memoriae. Coins bearing his image were melted down. Mentioning his name became a capital offense. Caracalla then bought the army's loyalty with a massive pay raise and granted Roman citizenship to every free person in the empire through the Constitutio Antoniniana of 212, less out of generosity than to expand the tax base. He was assassinated by a disgruntled soldier in 217 while urinating by the side of a road in Mesopotamia. The dynasty Severus had built lasted one generation beyond his death. The soldiers got their money though. Dad would have been proud of that part.

Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan commanded 3,000 cavalry against a Christian Arab garrison near Gaza. The defenders were Ghassanids — Arabs who'd fought for Byzantium for generations, same language and tactics as the men attacking them. The battle lasted hours. When it ended, the road to Damascus was open. Within three years, the entire Levant would be under Muslim control. The Byzantine Empire lost half its territory because a local garrison couldn't hold a single town in Palestine.

Zhao Kuangyin's troops staged a mutiny and draped a yellow robe over him while he slept. That was the story anyway. He'd been a general for the six-year-old emperor. His soldiers "insisted" he take the throne. He accepted reluctantly. Then he immediately paid off every potential rival and retired the old generals with gold and estates. The Song dynasty lasted 319 years. It started with the most polite coup in Chinese history.

Zhao Kuangyin's troops got him drunk, dressed him in yellow imperial robes while he slept, and declared him emperor when he woke up on February 4, 960. He hadn't planned a coup. His officers forced it on him. But he agreed on one condition: no killing. The transition from the Later Zhou dynasty to the Song was remarkably bloodless. Zhao, who took the imperial name Taizu, didn't execute the deposed child emperor or his regent. Instead, he bought out rival military governors with land, titles, and generous pensions, systematically converting potential enemies into comfortable retirees. He called the strategy "releasing military power with a cup of wine," literally drinking with his generals and then asking them to retire. They did. The Song Dynasty he founded lasted 319 years, from 960 to 1279, longer than the distance between the present day and the American Revolution. It produced some of the most significant cultural and technological achievements in Chinese history: movable type printing, gunpowder weapons, the magnetic compass for navigation, the world's first paper currency, and a civil service examination system that created the most meritocratic government bureaucracy of the medieval world. Song China had the largest economy on Earth. Its cities were the largest and most literate. The dynasty that started with a hangover built a civilization that wouldn't be matched in scale or sophistication for centuries.

The Prussian Confederation sent a formal letter of disobedience to the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights on February 4, 1454, declaring they were finished with the Order's rule. The letter wasn't a revolutionary manifesto. It was a legal document, carefully drafted by merchants and minor nobles who had spent years documenting the Order's abuses: excessive taxes, trade restrictions that benefited the Knights at the expense of local commerce, and the systematic exclusion of Prussian citizens from political decision-making. The Confederation had already offered their allegiance to King Casimir IV of Poland three days before sending the letter, ensuring they had a powerful protector before provoking the Order. The Teutonic Knights had ruled Prussia for 150 years, claiming divine authority for their governance as a crusading military order. They had originally been invited to the Baltic to convert pagan Prussians by the sword. By the fifteenth century, the crusade was long over but the occupation remained. The letter of disobedience triggered the Thirteen Years' War, one of the longest and most expensive conflicts of the late medieval period. Poland and the Confederation prevailed. The Second Peace of Thorn in 1466 stripped the Order of half its territory and made it a vassal of the Polish crown. A religious military order that had built one of the most formidable states in northern Europe was brought down by merchants who refused to pay taxes without representation.

John Rogers burned at Smithfield on February 4, 1555. First Protestant executed under Mary I. He'd translated the Bible into English under a pseudonym — "Thomas Matthew" — because that work was illegal. When Mary took the throne and restored Catholicism, he refused to recant. They offered him a pardon if he'd just say the words. He wouldn't. His wife and eleven children watched from the crowd. Witnesses said he washed his hands in the flames "as if the fire were cold water." Within three years, Mary's government burned 283 more. The executions were so unpopular they helped ensure England would never return to Rome.

Washington didn't want the job. He'd already turned down offers to become king. He wanted to retire to Mount Vernon, fix his fields, breed mules. But every single elector voted for him—69 votes, the only unanimous presidential election in American history. He took eight days to travel from Virginia to New York for the inauguration because crowds kept stopping him in every town. He wrote in his diary that he felt like a man going to his execution. He set the two-term precedent that lasted 144 years, not because it was law, but because he walked away. The republic survived because its most powerful man chose to be less powerful.