February 5

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".
• 1929 – They'll Do It Every Time, a comic strip still in syndication as of 2005, debuts in a San Francisco newspaper.
• 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 de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné, French author
• 1725 – James Otis, American lawyer and patriot (d. 1783)
• 1748 – Christian Gottlieb Neefe, organist/composer
• 1788 – Robert Peel, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1850)
• 1804 – Johan Ludvig Runeberg, Finnish poet (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, French automobile pioneer (d. 1935)
• 1880 – Gabriel Voisin, French aviation pioneer (d. 1973)
• 1900 – Adlai Stevenson, American 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)
• 1923 – Claude King, American country musician
• 1927 – Ruth Fertel, entrepreneur (d. 2002)
• 1928 – Andrew Greeley, priest, novelist
• 1929 – Fred Sinowatz, politician
• 1929  – Al Worthington, baseball player
• 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, Pro 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
• 1947 – David Ladd, American actor-producer
• 1948 – Christopher Guest, actor, writer, director, composer
• 1948 – Barbara Hershey, actress
• 1948 – Errol Morris, American documentary film director
• 1949 – Nigel Olsson, rock drummer
• 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
• 1971 – Markus Redmond, American actor
• 1972 – Mary E. Donaldson, Crown Princess of Denmark
• 1977 – Ahmad Merritt, football player
• 1984 – Carlos Tévez, 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 (b. 1748)
• 1881 – Thomas Carlyle, Scottish writer and historian (b. 1795)
• 1915 – Ross Barnes, baseball player (b. 1850)
• 1922 – Slavoljub Eduard Penkala, Croatian 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 player (b. 1913)
• 1972 – Marianne Moore, American poet (b. 1887)
• 1981 – Ella Grasso, Governor of Connecticut
• 1991 – Dean Jagger, actor
• 1993 – Joseph L. Mankiewicz, writer, producer, and director (b. 1909)
• 1995 – Doug McClure, American actor
• 1997 – Pamela Harriman, American diplomat
• 1999 – Wassily Leontief, economist
• 2003 – Helge Boes, CIA officer
• 2005 – Gnassingbe Eyadema, President of Togo (b. 1937)

Holidays and observances

• Catholicism – Feast day of St Agatha.

External links

• BBC: On This Day

February 4 – February 6 – January 5 – March 5 — listing of all days