1. On March 4, 1861, Mississippi became the second state to secede from the United States, following South Carolina. The state's secession convention had been meeting since January of that year, and its decision to leave the Union helped spark the Civil War.

2. In 1896, on March 4, Mississippi State University was founded under the name Mississippi A&M College. The institution, which was originally established as a land-grant university, has since become one of the largest and most prestigious universities in the state.

3. On March 4, 1913, the first woman suffrage parade was held in Washington, D.C., as part of the national campaign for women's right to vote. While no such parades were held in Mississippi at the time, the state would later become a battleground for the suffrage movement.

4. In 1965, on March 4, the Selma to Montgomery marches began in Alabama, part of a larger civil rights campaign to secure voting rights for African Americans in the southern United States. Mississippi was also a key site of civil rights struggle, and played a major role in the eventual passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

5. Most recently, on March 4, 2017, Mississippi State's women's basketball team won the SEC Championship with a victory over South Carolina. The team went on to make it all the way to the NCAA championship game that year, where they fell to South Carolina in a closely contested match.