March 5 - Definition and Overview

March 5 is the 64th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (65th in leap years). There are 301 days remaining.

Events

• 1046 - Naser Khosrow begins his "itinerary" which he would later describe in Safarnameh.
• 1689 - Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham 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 Crispus Attucks, killed by British troops in an event that would help start the American Revolutionary War five years later.
• 1784 - Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney named President of the Board of Trade in its second iteration.
• 1793 - French troops are defeated by Austrian forces and Liege is recaptured.
• 1821 - James Monroe is inaugurated for a second term as President of the United States.
• 1824 - First Burmese War: The British officially declare war on Burma.
• 1836 - Samuel Colt makes the first production-model revolver (.34-caliber).
• 1842 - Over 500 Mexican troops led by Rafael Vasquez invade Texas, briefly occupy San Antonio and then head back to the Rio Grande. This is the first such invasion since the Texas revolution.
• 1848 - Louis Antoine Garnier-Pages named French minister of Finance.
• 1849 - Zachary Taylor is inaugurated as the 12th President of the United States.
• 1860 - Parma, Tuscany, Modena and Romagna voted in referenda to join Kingdom of Sardinia.
• 1861 - Montgomery Blair named 23rd Postmaster General of the United States by Abraham Lincoln
• 1867 - Little River County, Arkansas organized in the United States.
• 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 premieres at La Scala.
• 1872 - George Westinghouse patents the air brake.
• 1877 - Rutherford B. Hayes is publicly inaugurated as the 19th President of the United States (he was privately inaugurated on March 3).
• 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 ball lightning formation.
• 1905 - Russian troops begin to retreat from Mukden, Manchuria after losing 100,000 troops in three days.
• 1907 - The second Duma is opened in St. Petersburg, Russia and 40,000 demonstrators had to be dispersed by Russian troops.
• 1912 - Italian forces are the first to use airships for a military purpose by using them for reconnaissance west of Tripoli behind Turkish lines.
• 1915 - World War I: LZ 33, a zeppelin, is damaged by enemy fire during a patrol mission; it stranded south of Ostend.
• 1916 - Spanish football club Real Club Deportivo Mallorca founded.
• 1917 - Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated for a second term as President of the United States.
• 1918 - The Soviet Union moves the national capital from Petrograd to Moscow.
• 1924 - Shefqet Verlaci becomes Prime Minister of Albania.
• 1929 - LanChile airline begins operations.

1930s-1950s

• 1931 - Daniel Salamanca Urey named President of Bolivia.
• 1933 - Great Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares a "bank holiday", closing all United States banks and freezing all financial transactions.
• 1933 - In Germany, the Nazis win 44 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections.
• 1936 - First flight of fighter airplane Spitfire Type 300.
• 1940 - Members of Soviet politbiuro sign an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POW, known also as Katyn massacre.
• 1943 - First flight of Gloster Meteor aircraft in Britain.
• 1946 - Winston Churchill names the Iron Curtain in his speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. This event is often regarded at the beginning of the Cold War.
• 1955 - President of Lithuania, Antanas Merkys dies, after having been imprisoned and deported to Saratov, Soviet Union.
• 1956 - Ernie Terrell becomes the WBA world heavyweight champion, beating Eddie Machen by a 15-round decision, in Chicago.
• 1958 - Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is established.
• 1958 - Explorer 2, part of the Explorer program, launched and eventually failed.

1960s-1980s

• 1960 - Elvis Presley is discharged from the United States Army.
• 1966 - A BOAC Boeing 707 jet crashes on Mount Fuji, Japan killing 124
• 1966 - In Luxembourg, Udo Jürgens wins the eleventh Eurovision Song Contest for Austria singing "Merci, cherie" (Thanks, babe).
• 1970 - A nuclear non-proliferation treaty goes into effect after ratification by 43 nations.
• 1970 - Dubnium atoms first detected conclusively.
• 1971 - First live performance of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven."
• 1973 - Donald DeFreeze, future Symbionese Liberation Army leader, escapes from Vacaville Prison
• 1974 - Yom Kippur War: Israeli forces withdrew from the west bank of the Suez Canal.
• 1978 - Landsat 3 launched.
• 1979 - Detection equipment picks up a gamma ray burst originating from the Large Magellanic Cloud, leading to the discovery of soft gamma repeaters.
• 1981 - Cannibal Alferd Packer pardoned posthumously.
• 1982 - Actor and SNL star John Belushi dies of a drug overdose in his hotel room at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard.
• 1982 - Venera 14, a Soviet satellite arrives at the planet Venus.
• 1985 - Body of undercover DEA agent Enrique Camarena found.
• 1988 - Constitution of Turks and Caicos Islands restored and revised.
• 1991 - Iraq releases all Gulf War prisoners
• 1993 - Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson is banned from international competition for life after testing positive for banned substances for the second time.
• 1998 - NASA announced that that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon had found enough water in polar craters to support a human colony and rocket fueling station.
• 1998 - NASA announces the choice of United States Air Force Lt. Col. Eileen Collins as the first woman commander of a space shuttle mission.
• 1999 - Paul Okalik elected first Premier of Nunavut.
• 2001 - 35 Muslim pilgrims crushed to death during the annual Hajj pilgrimage
• 2002 - MTV begins airing The Osbournes.
• 2003 - University of Manchester and UMIST announce agreement to merge operations.
• 2003 - Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks provokes controversy in the U.S. by stating that the band was "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."
• 2003 - Nature withdrew several papers as a result of the Jan Hendrik Schön scandal.
• 2004 - A three-headed frog is found in Weston-super-Mare, England.

Births

• 1133 - King Henry II of England, (d. 1189)
• 1324 - King David II of Scotland, (d. 1371)
• 1512 - Gerardus Mercator, cartographer, (d. 1594)
• 1563 - John Coke, English politician, (d. 1644)
• 1575 - William Oughtred, English mathematician
• 1658 - Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, explorer, (d. 1730)
• 1693 - Johann Jakob Wettstein, theologian, (d. 1754)
• 1696 - Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, painter, (d. 1770)
• 1748 - Jonas C. Dryander, botanist, (d. 1810)
• 1748 - William Shield, musician, (d. 1829)
• 1750 - Jean-Baptiste Gaspard d'Ansse de Villoison, classical scholar, (d. 1805)
• 1814 - Wilhelm von Giesebrecht, historian, (d. 1889)
• 1815 - John Wentworth, U.S. politician, (d. 1888)
• 1817 - Austen Henry Layard, excavator of Nineveh, (d. 1894)
• 1836 - Charles Goodnight, cowboy, (d. 1929)
• 1851 - Václav Brožík, artist
• 1867 - Louis-Alexandre Taschereau, Premier of Quebec
• 1869 - Michael von Faulhaber, cardinal and archbishop, (d. 1952)
• 1870 - Frank Norris, writer
• 1871 - Rosa Luxemburg, revolutionary
• 1879 - William Beveridge, economist
• 1886 - Dong Biwu, a founder of the Communist Party of China
• 1887 - Heitor Villa-Lobos, Brazilian composer
• 1897 - Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, Chinese political figure, (d. 2003)
• 1898 - Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People's Republic of China (d. 1976)
• 1904 - Karl Rahner, theologian
• 1905 - Günther Lüders, actor and film director, (d. 1975)
• 1908 - Rex Harrison, actor
• 1910 - Józef Marcinkiewicz, mathematician
• 1915 - Laurent Schwartz, mathematician
• 1918 - James Tobin, economist
• 1922 - Pier Paolo Pasolini, writer, film director
• 1933 - Samantha Eggar, actress
• 1936 - Dean Stockwell, actor
• 1938 - Fred Williamson, American football star and actor
• 1939 - Pierre Wynants, Belgian chef
• 1942 - Felipe González Márquez, Prime Minister of Spain
• 1943 - Billy Backus, boxer
• 1947 - Clodagh Rodgers, Northern Irish singer
• 1951 - Elaine Paige, singer, actress
• 1955 - Penn Jillette, magician, comedian
• 1958 - Andy Gibb, singer (d. 1988)
• 1966 - Michael Irvin, American football player
• 1970 - John Frusciante, musician ("The Red Hot Chili Peppers")
• 1974 - Jens Jeremies, German international football player
• 1975 - Jolene Blalock, actress (Star Trek: Enterprise)
• 1975 - Niki Taylor, fashion model
• 1976 - Sarunas Jasikevicius, Lithuanian basketball player
• 1977 - Wally Szczerbiak, NBA basketball player
• 1981 - Frances Ashton, supermodel

Deaths

• 1605 - Pope Clement VIII
• 1611 - Shimazu Yoshihisa, Japanese daimyo and samurai (b. 1533)
• 1726 - Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull
• 1790 - Flora Macdonald, Jacobite heroine
• 1815 - Franz Mesmer, developer of hypnotism
• 1827 - Alessandro Volta, physicist
• 1827 - Pierre-Simon Laplace, mathematician
• 1829 - John Adams, last surviving Bounty mutineer
• 1849 - David Scott, painter
• 1876 - Marie d'Agoult, writer
• 1893 - Hippolyte Taine, historian
• 1895 - Henry Rawlinson, soldier
• 1903 - George Francis Robert Henderson, soldier
• 1907 - Friedrich Blass, scholar
• 1926 - Clément Ader, engineer
• 1927 - Franz Mertens, mathematician
• 1940 - Cai Yuanpei, educator
• 1944 - Max Jacob, poet and writer
• 1953 - Sergei Prokofiev, composer, (b. 1891)
• 1953 - Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, (b. 1879)
• 1953 - Herman J. Mankiewicz, screenwriter
• 1963 - Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas, country music singers
• 1965 - Chen Cheng, Chinese politician
• 1965 - Pepper Martin, baseball player
• 1966 - Anna Akhmatova, poet
• 1967 - Georges Vanier, Governor General of Canada
• 1974 - Sol Hurok, impresario
• 1980 - Jay Silverheels, actor
• 1980 - Winifred Wagner, Bayreuth Festival organizer
• 1981 - Yip Harburg, lyricist
• 1982 - John Belushi, actor, (b. 1949)
• 1984 - Tito Gobbi, Italian baritone (b. 1915)
• 1984 - William Powell, actor, (b. 1892)
• 1988 - Alberto Olmedo, comedian
• 1997 - Samm Sinclair Baker, coauthor of the Scarsdale Diet
• 1999 - Richard Kiley, actor
• 2003 - Hellmuth Buddenberg, entrepreneur

Holidays and observances

• St Piran's Day - Cornwall's national day
• Feast of St. Kieran, patron of the Diocese of Ossory, in Irish calendar
• Approximate beginning of month of jīngzhé in Chinese calendar

March 4 - March 6 - February 5 - April 5 -- listing of all days