March 5 - Events

Events

• 363 – Roman Emperor Julian moves from Antioch with an army of 90,000 to attack the Sassanid Empire, in a campaign which would bring about his own death.
• 1046 – Naser Khosrow begins the seven-year Middle Eastern journey which he will later describe in his bookSafarnama.
• 1279 – the Livonian Order is defeated in the Battle of Aizkraukle by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
• 1496 – King Henry VII of England issues letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorising them to explore unknown lands.
• 1689 – Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham is named Secretary of State for the Northern Department.
• 1766 – Antonio de Ulloa, the first Spanish governor of Louisiana, arrives in New Orleans.
• 1770 – Boston Massacre: Five Americans, including a black man named Crispus Attucks, and a boy, are killed by British troops in an event that would contribute to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary Warfive years later.
• 1784 – Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney is named President of the Board of Trade.
• 1824 – First Burmese War: The British officially declare war on Burma.
• 1836 – Samuel Colt makes the first production-model revolver, the .34-caliber.
• 1848 – Louis Antoine Garnier-Pages is named French minister of Finance.
• 1850 – The Britannia Bridge across the Menai Strait between the Isle of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales is opened.
• 1860 – Parma, Tuscany, Modena and Romagna vote in referendums to join the Kingdom of Sardinia.
• 1868 – A court of impeachment is organized in the United States Senate to hear charges against President Andrew Johnson.
• 1868 – Mefistofele, an opera by Arrigo Boito receives its première performance at La Scala.
• 1872 – George Westinghouse patents the air brake.
• 1894 – Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery becomes First Lord of the Treasury.
• 1904 – Nikola Tesla, in Electrical World and Engineer, describes the process of the ball lightning formation.
• 1912 – Italian forces are the first to use airships for military purposes, employing them for reconnaissance behind Turkish lines.
• 1933 – Great Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares a "bank holiday", closing all U.S. banks and freezing all financial transactions.
• 1940 – Members of Soviet politburo sign an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs, known also as the Katyn massacre.
• 1942 – United States Navy Seabees established.
• 1943 – First flight of Gloster Meteor jet aircraft in the United Kingdom.
• 1946 – Winston Churchill uses the phrase "Iron Curtain" in his speech at Westminster College, Missouri.
• 1946 – Hungarian Communists and Social Democrats co-found the Left Bloc.
• 1958 – The Explorer 2 spacecraft launches and fails to reach Earth orbit.
• 1960 – Alister Hardy publicly announces his idea that ape-human divergence may have been due to a coastal phase, giving rise to theAquatic Ape Hypothesis.
• 1965 – March Intifada: A Leftist uprising erupts in Bahrain against British colonial presence.
• 1966 – BOAC Flight 911 crashes on Mount Fuji, Japan, killing 124.
• 1970 – The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty goes into effect after ratification by 43 nations.
• 1973 – Donald DeFreeze, the future Symbionese Liberation Army leader, escapes from Vacaville Prison.
• 1974 – Yom Kippur War: Israeli forces withdraw from the west bank of the Suez Canal.
• 1975 – First meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club
• 1978 – The Landsat 3 is launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
• 1979 – Soviet probes Venera 11, Venera 12 and the American solar satellite Helios II all are hit by "off the scale" gamma rays leading to the discovery of soft gamma repeaters.
• 1979 – America's Voyager 1 spacecraft has its closest approach to Jupiter, 172,000 miles.
• 1982 – The Soviet probe Venera 14 arrives at the planet Venus.
• 1984 – 6,000 miners in the United Kingdom begin their strike at Cortonwood Colliery.
• 1988 – The Constitution of Turks and Caicos Islands is restored and revised.
• 1999 – Paul Okalik is elected first Premier of Nunavut.
• 2001 – In Mecca, 35 Muslim pilgrims are crushed to death during the annual Hajj pilgrimage.
• 2003 – In Haifa, 17 Israeli civilians are killed by a Hamas suicide bomb in the Haifa bus 37 massacre.