5 February
February 5 is the 36th day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar. There are 329 days remaining (330 in leap years).
Events
- 1576 - Henry of
Navarre converts to Roman Catholicism in order to ensure his
right to the throne of France.
- 1631 - Roger Williams emigrates to Boston.
- 1778 - South Carolina becomes
the first state to ratify the Articles of
Confederation.
- 1782 - Spanish defeat British forces and capture Minorca.
- 1846 - The Oregon Spectator becomes the first newspaper on the Pacific coast of the United States.
- 1859 - Wallachia and Moldavia are united under Alexander John Cuza under the name Romania (see December 1, 1918 for the final unification,
Transylvania and other regions were still missing at this time).
- 1881 - Phoenix, Arizona
is incorporated.
- 1885 - King Leopold
II of Belgium establishes the Congo as a personal
possession.
- 1917 - The current constitution of Mexico is adopted,
establishing a federal republic with powers separated into
independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
- 1917 - The United States Congress passes a law
banning most Asian immigration.
- 1919 - Charlie Chaplin,
Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launch
United Artists.
- 1922 - DeWitt and Lila
Wallace publish the first issue of Reader's Digest. (Some
sources say February 7.)
- 1924 - The Royal Greenwich Observatory began to broadcast hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips".
- 1937 - President Franklin D.
Roosevelt proposes a plan to enlarge the Supreme Court of the United States.
- 1945 - World War II: General
Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila.
- 1953 - The movie Peter Pan premieres (Roxy Theatre, New York
City).
- 1958 - Gamel Abdel
Nasser is nominated to be the first president of the United
Arab Republic.
- 1958 - A hydrogen bomb known as
Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.
- 1961 - The Sunday
Telegraph publishes its first issue.
- 1962 - French
President Charles De Gaulle calls for allowing Algeria to be an independent nation.
- 1968 - The Battle of Khe
Sanh of the Vietnam War began.
- 1971 - Apollo 14 lands on the Moon.
- 1972 - Bob Douglas becomes the first African American
elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
- 1974 - John Murtha becomes the
first Vietnam War veteran elected to the United States Congress.
- 1978 - The Blizzard of
1978, one of the worst Nor'easters ever to hit New England, formed.
- 1988 - Manuel Noriega is
indicted on drug smuggling and money laundering charges.
- 1988 - Comic Relief held the
first "Red Nose Day", which raised a £15 million in the United Kingdom
for charity.
- 1991 - A Michigan court bars Dr. Jack Kevorkian from assisting in suicides.
- 1994 - Byron De La
Beckwith is convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
- 1997 - The so-called "Big Three" banks in Switzerland announce the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families.
- 1997 - Morgan Stanley and
Dean Witter investment banks
announce a $10 billion merger.
- 1999 - Mike Tyson is sentenced to a
year's imprisonment for the August 31, 1998
assault on two people.
- 2001 - Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman announced that they had separated.
- 2003 - U.S.
plan to invade Iraq: Colin Powell addresses the UN Security Council on Iraq.
- 2004 - 23 Chinese people drown when a group of
35 cockle-pickers are trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, England. 21 bodies are recovered.
- 2004 - Rebels from the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front captured the city of
Gonaïves, starting the 2004 Haiti rebellion.
Births
- 1600 - Dr. Johan Picardt, doctor and author
- 1608 - Caspar Schott, scientist
- 1626 - Marie Marquise de Sévigné, author
- 1748 - Christian Gottlieb Neefe, organist/composer
- 1788 - Robert Peel, Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom (d. 1850)
- 1804 - Johan Ludvig
Runeberg, the national poet of Finland (d. 1877)
- 1808 - Carl Spitzweg, painter
(d. 1885)
- 1810 - Ole Bull, Norwegian violinist (d. 1880)
- 1837 - Dwight L. Moody,
evangelist (d. 1899)
- 1840 - John Boyd Dunlop,
inventor (d. 1921)
- 1848 - Joris-Karl
Huysmans, author (d. 1907)
- 1848 - Belle Starr, outlaw (d.
1889)
- 1878 - André Citroën,
automobile pioneer (d. 1935)
- 1900 - Adlai Stevenson,
politician (d. 1965)
- 1904 - Walter Gross, cabaretist (d. 1989)
- 1906 - John Carradine, actor
(d. 1988)
- 1908 - Daisy
and Violet Hilton, conjoined twins, actresses (d. 1969)
- 1914 - William S.
Burroughs, American author (d. 1997)
- 1918 - Tim Holt, American actor (d. 1973)
- 1919 - Red Buttons, actor
- 1919 - Andreas Papandreou, Greek politician (d. 1996)
- 1921 - John Pritchard,
English conductor (d. 1989)
- 1927 - Ruth Fertel, entrepreneur
(d. 2002)
- 1928 - Andrew Greeley,
priest, novelist
- 1929 - Fred Sinowatz,
politician
- 1930 - John A. Gambling,
radio show host (d. 2004)
- 1934 - Hank Aaron, Baseball Hall of Famer
- 1935 - Sandra Paretti, author (d. 1994)
- 1937 - Stuart Damon, American
actor
- 1940 - H.R. Giger, artist
- 1941 - Kaspar Villiger,
former member of the Swiss
Federal Council
- 1941 - David Selby, American actor
- 1941 - Jane Bryant Quinn, American journalist
- 1942 - Roger Staubach,
Football Hall of Famer
- 1943 - Nolan Bushnell,
video game pioneer
- 1943 - Craig Morton, American football star
- 1943 - Michael Mann, American film
director, writer, producer
- 1944 - Gilles Aubin, physicist
- 1944 - Al Kooper, musician
- 1945 - Charlotte
Rampling, actress
- 1947 - Darrell Waltrip,
automobile racer
- 1948 - Christopher
Guest, actor, writer, director, composer
- 1948 - Barbara Hershey, actress
- 1948 - Errol Morris, American documentary film director
- 1956 - Richard S. Stamos New York writer, artist, nascent scientist, Cartesan Agnostic.
- 1962 - Jennifer Jason
Leigh, American actress
- 1964 - Laura Linney, actress
- 1964 - Duff McKagen, Guns N'Roses
- 1965 - Gheorghe Hagi, Romanian football player
- 1966 - Rok Petrovič,
Slovenian alpine skier (d. 1993)
- 1968 - Roberto Alomar,
baseball player
- 1969 - Bobby Brown, singer
- 1972 - Mary E. Donaldson, Crown Princess of Denmark
- 1984 - Carlos Tevez, Argentina football striker
- 1985 - Cristiano
Ronaldo, football player
- 1989 - Jeremy Sumpter,
American actor
Deaths
- 995 - William IV,
Duke of Aquitaine
- 1520 - Sten Sture
the Younger, Regent of Sweden
- 1818 - King Charles XIII / Carl II of
Sweden-Norway (b. 1748)
- 1881 - Thomas Carlyle,
essayist and historian (b. 1795)
- 1915 - Ross Barnes, baseball player (b. 1850)
- 1922 - Slavoljub Eduard Penkala, Croat inventor (b. 1871)
- 1946 - George Arliss, actor (b.
1868)
- 1966 - Ludwig
Binswanger, existential psychiatrist (b. 1881)
- 1967 - L.L. Bean, retailer
- 1970 - Rudy York, Major League Baseball All-Star (b. 1913)
- 1972 - Marianne Moore,
poet (b. 1887)
- 1981 - Ella Grasso, former governor
of Connecticut
- 1991 - Dean Jagger, actor
- 1993 - Joseph L.
Mankiewicz, writer, producer, director (b. 1909)
- 1995 - Doug McClure, American actor
- 1997 - Pamela Harriman,
American diplomat
- 1999 - Wassily Leontief,
economist
- 2003 - Helge Boes, CIA operations
officer
- 2005 - Gnassingbe
Eyadema, president of Togo (b. 1937)
Holidays and observances
February 4 - February 6 -
January 5 - March 5 -- listing of all days
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