February 4, 2004: Facebook Goes Live

February 4, 2004: Facebook is launched in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Harvard University student Mark Zuckerberg, who screwed over Divya Narendra and the twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. This was, of course, before Zuckerberg screwed over America by helping Cambridge Analytica help steal the 2016 Presidential election.

Narendra did all right for himself, having founded SumZero, an online investment company. The Winklevoss Twins got rich, too, even more so in the recent cryptocurrency craze that shows no signs of fading.

Time magazine named Zuckerberg its Person of the Year for 2010, citing Facebook's role in the growth of social media. Facebook's IPO, launched on May 18, 2012 at $38.00, dropped to $27.72 by June 1, with no help at all from Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy. But it rebounded: On February 4, 2022, a single share of Facebook stock closed at $237.09.

In a 2018 episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History, "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist played Elon Musk, while "Nice" Peter Shukoff played Zuckerberg.

UPDATE: In hindsight, they did this battle way too early: Musk looked like something of a hero at the time, but has since revealed himself to be even more villainous than Zuckerberg. And while each character accused the other of racism, Musk's has since been revealed to be truly abhorrent.

One of the ERB Musk's complaints was about artificial intelligence -- "AI." The real Musk has expressed concern over it, which won him a lot of followers. In 2025, Time named "The Architects of AI" as their collective "Persons of the Year." Two of them were Zuckerberg (a 2nd selection) and Musk. The others were Sam Altman of OpenAI, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Fei-Fei Li of ImageNet, and Lisa Su of AMD.

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February 4, 2004 was a Wednesday. Baseball was out of season. Football had just wrapped up, with the New England Patriots beat the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl XXXVIII. There were 10 games played in the NBA that night:

* The New Jersey Nets beat the Miami Heat, 99-88 at the Continental Airlines Arena at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford New Jersey.

* The Los Angeles Clippers beat the Boston Celtics, 95-86 at the Fleet Center (now the TD Garden) in Boston.

* The Memphis Grizzlies beat the Washington Wizards, 103-101 at the MCI Center (now the Capital One Arena) in Washington.

* The Atlanta Hawks beat the Minnesota Timberwolves, 97-89 at the Philips Arena (now the State Farm Arena) in Atlanta. Sharif Abdur-Rahim had 32 points and 14 rebounds.

* The Dallas Mavericks beat the New Orleans Hornets, 113-104 at the New Orleans Arena (now the Smoothie King Center).

* The Houston Rockets beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 103-89 at the Toyota Center in Houston.

* The Toronto Raptors beat the Orlando Magic, 110-90 at the Air Canada Centre (now the Scotiabank Arena) in Toronto.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Cleveland Cavaliers, 111-106 in overtime at the Gund Arena (now the Rocket Mortgage Arena) in Cleveland. For the Lakers, Shaquille O'Neal scored 37 points, and Gary Payton scored 30. Kobe Bryant was injured and did not play. LeBron James, then a rookie, scored 32 for the Cavs.

* The Chicago Bulls beat the Utah Jazz, 95-79 at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City.

* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Phoenix Suns, 101-97 at the America West Arena (now the Mortgage Matchup Center) in Phoenix.

There were 6 games played in the NHL that night:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Minnesota Wild, 4-3 at Madison Square Garden.

* The Philadelphia Flyers beat the Washington Capitals, 5-1 at the Wachovia Center (now the Xfinity Mobile Arena) in Philadelphia.

* The Dallas Mavericks beat the Columbus Blue Jackets, 1-0 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.

* The Florida Panthers beat the Phoenix Coyotes, 5-4 at the Glendale Arena (now the Desert Diamond Arena) in the Phoenix suburb of Glendale, Arizona. Olli Jokinen scored the game-winning goal, with 1:38 left in overtime.

* The Edmonton Oilers beat the St. Louis Blues, 5-3 at Rexall Place (as the Northlands Coliseum was then known) in Edmonton.

* And the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim beat the Carolina Panthers, 3-2 at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim (now the Honda Center).