February 4 Birthday

Famous Birthdays on February 4

• Charles Lindbergh (1902)

  American aviator who completed the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight in 1927, flying from New York to Paris.

• Rosa Parks (1913)

  American civil rights activist whose 1955 refusal to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama helped ignite the modern civil rights movement.

• Betty Friedan (1921)

  American writer and activist whose 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is widely credited with sparking second-wave feminism in the United States.

• Alice Cooper (1948)

  American rock musician known for theatrical, shock-rock stage performances and hits including 'School's Out.'

• Gabrielle Union (1972)

  American actress known for films including Bring It On and Bad Boys II.

This Day in History

• 1789 — George Washington was unanimously elected the first President of the United States by the Electoral College.

• 1861 — Delegates from seceded Southern states met in Montgomery, Alabama to form the Confederate States of America.

• 1938 — Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length cel-animated feature film, went into wide theatrical release across the United States.

• 2004 — Mark Zuckerberg launched 'Thefacebook' from his Harvard dormitory room, the platform that would grow into Facebook.

What February 4 Says About You

Two of the most consequential acts of quiet, individual refusal in American history share this birthday, decades apart. Rosa Parks, born February 4, 1913, is remembered specifically for what she declined to do — give up a bus seat — and for how that single, deliberate refusal helped catalyze the modern civil rights movement rather than simply register as an isolated protest. Betty Friedan, born eight years later in 1921, built a different kind of refusal into The Feminine Mystique, rejecting the prevailing 1950s narrative about women's domestic fulfillment and, in doing so, helped launch second-wave feminism. Both were born on a date whose numerology day number, 4, is traditionally tied to stability, structure, and the patient, methodical work of building something durable — an odd but genuine fit for two women whose influence took real organizing and years of sustained effort rather than a single dramatic moment. Charles Lindbergh, also born February 4, took a more literal kind of solo, structural risk in 1927, flying alone across the Atlantic in a plane he'd helped design for exactly that purpose. The date's other history leans toward founding acts as well: George Washington's unanimous 1789 election as the first U.S. President set a genuine institutional precedent, and the Confederate States of America was formed at a convention in Montgomery, Alabama on this same date in 1861 — the same city where, 94 years later, Rosa Parks would make her stand. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which entered wide release on this date in 1938, was itself a founding act in its own field, the first feature-length animated film to prove the format could work commercially and creatively. As an Aquarius birthday, February 4 fits neatly with Aquarius's traditional association with independent thinking and social progress. Amethyst marks the month as its birthstone, and violet and primrose as its paired flowers, closing out a date whose real history is unusually dense with individuals who changed the structure of something larger than themselves, one deliberate act at a time. Rosa Parks had already served as secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter for over a decade before her 1955 arrest, and had specifically trained at the Highlander Folk School in nonviolent resistance techniques months earlier, undercutting the popular myth that her refusal was a spontaneous, unplanned act. Betty Friedan went on to co-found the National Organization for Women in 1966, translating The Feminine Mystique's ideas into direct political organizing. Charles Lindbergh later became a controversial public figure for his isolationist views and prewar visits to Nazi Germany, a legacy that complicates his earlier status as an aviation hero. Mark Zuckerberg's original site, launched on this date in 2004, was called 'Thefacebook' and was initially restricted to Harvard students before expanding to other universities and eventually the general public.