March 5 in history

1046 Naser Khosrow began the seven-year Middle Eastern journey which he will later describe in his book Safarnama.

1133 – King Henry II of England, was born (d. 1189).

1324  King David II of Scotland, was born (d. 1371).

1326 Louis I of Hungary, was born (d. 1382).

1496 King Henry VI  issued letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorising them to explore unknown lands.

1766 Antonio de Ulloa, the first Spanish governor of Louisiana arrived in New Orleans.

1770 Boston Massacre: Five Americans, were killed by British troops.

1784 Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney was named President of the Board of Trade.

1824 First Burmese War: The British officially declare war on Burma.

1830 The outbreak of the Girls’ War  at Kororareka.

Outbreak of the Girls' War at Kororāreka

1836 Samuel Colt made the first production-model revolver, the .34-caliber.

1850 The Britannia Bridge across the Menai Strait between the Isle of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales opened.

1860 Parma, Tuscany, Modena and Romagna voted in referenda to join the Kingdom of Sardinia.

1868  A court of impeachment was 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 patented the air brake.

1904 Nikola Tesla, in Electrical World and Engineer, described the process of the ball lightning formation.

1908  Sir Rex Harrison, English actor, was born  (d. 1990).

1912 Italian forces were the first to use airships for military purposes, using them for reconnaissance behind Turkish lines.

1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a “bank holiday”, closing all U.S. banks and freezing all financial transactions.

1936 Canaan Banana, first President of Zimbabwe, was born (d. 2003).

1937 Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ, President of Nigeria, was born.

1940 Members of Soviet politburo signed an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs, known also as the Katyn massacre.

1942 Felipe González, Prime Minister of Spain, was born.

1943 First flight of Gloster Meteor jet aircraft in the United Kingdom.

1946 Winston Churchill used the phrase “Iron Curtain” in his speech at Westminster College, Missouri.

1946 Hungarian Communists and Social Democrats co-founded the Left Bloc.

1948 Elaine Paige, English singer and actress, was born.

1949 The Jharkhand Party was founded in India.

1952  – Alan Clark, English keyboardist (Dire Straits), was born.

1958 The Explorer 2 spacecraft launched and failed to reach Earth orbit.

1960 The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis originated when Alister Hardy publicly announced his idea that ape-human divergence may have been due to a coastal phase.

1962 Charlie and Craig Reid, Scottish musicians (The Proclaimers), were born.

1965 March Intifada: A Leftist uprising erupts in Bahrain against British colonial presence.

1966 BOAC Flight 911 crashed on Mount Fuji  killing 124.

1970 John Frusciante, American musician (Red Hot Chili Peppers), was born.

1970 The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty went into effect after ratification by 43 nations.

1973 Donald DeFreeze, the future Symbionese Liberation Army leader, escaped from Vacaville Prison.

1974 Yom Kippur War: Israeli forces withdrew from the west bank of the Suez Canal.

1975 First meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club

1978 The Landsat 3 was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

1979 Soviet probes Venera 11, Venera 12 and the American solar satellite Helios 2 were hit by “off the scale” gamma rays leading to the discovery of soft gamma repeaters.

1979 – Voyager 1‘s closest approach to Jupiter, 172,000 miles.

1982 Daniel Carter, New Zealand rugby player, was born.

1982 Venera 14, a Soviet satellite, arrived at Venus.

1984 –  6,000 Miners in the United Kingdom began their historic strike at Cortonwood Colliery.

1999 Paul Okalik was elected first Premier of Nunavut.

2001 In Mecca, 35 Muslim pilgrims were crushed to death during the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

2003 17 Israeli civilians were killed by a Hamas suicide bomb in the Haifa bus 37 massacre.

2012 – Invisible Children launched the Stop Kony campaign with the release of Kony 2012.

2012 – At least two people were killed and six injured after a shooting in a hair salon in Bucharest, Romania.

 

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

2 Responses to March 5 in history

  1. Andrei says:

    1940 Members of Soviet politburo signed an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs, known also as the Katyn massacre.

    Very interesting that this item now appears and phrased as it is, it first appeared on your Today in history posts in 2013 in the immediate precursor to the latest problems in Ukraine which first appeared in public November 2013.

    This event from WW2 has been used to stir Anti Russian sentiment in Poland in recent years and the answer as to who the perpetrators really were is not a clear cut as it may appear from wikipedia and never has been

    The Wikipedia article has been subject to multiple revisions and edit wars also in recent times

    Life’s too short to do the forensics alas

    I’d love to know the real truth of this matter but we never will.

    The waters have been being muddied on this ever since 1941 by all sorts of people with different agendas, mostly to stir up enmity and discord between people.

    It is sad though that we cannot move on from the past though

    But today’s current events are tomorrows history I suppose.

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  2. Andrei says:

    Another source of water muddying is of course another massacre during WW2 the Khatyn massacre an event almost unknown in the West but well known in the Russian speaking world – this was one of literally thousands of similar massacres that took place in Belarus during those dark years, though one of he biggest.

    It was recently referred in a speech by VVP and there were howls of outrage that he was guilty of history revisionism his words being interpreted as referring to the Katyn Forest rather than Khatyn village – the ambiguity only exists in transliteration not spoken Russian

    The world is a messy place

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