On February 5th...

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976 Emperor Sanjo of Japan was born.

995 William IV, Duke of Aquitaine, died.

1515 Venetian classical scholar Aldus Manutius died.

1631 Roger Williams arrived in Boston, Massachusetts.

1644 The first livestock branding law in America was passed in Connecticut.

1661 Chinese Emperor Shunzhi died.

1679 German Emperor Leopold I signed a peace treaty with France.

1725 American revolutionary spokesman James Otis was born.

1736 Methodists John and Charles Wesley arrived in Savannah, Georgia.

1778 South Carolina became the second state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.

1783 Sweden recognized the independence of the United States.
1783 Earthquakes killed 30,000 people in Calabria, Italy.

1784 William Taylor Barry, the first Postmaster General of the United States to hold Cabinet rank, was born.

1788 British statesman Sir Robert Peel was born.

1804 Poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg was born.

1810 Violinist Ole Bull was born.

1811 George, Prince of Wales, was named the Prince Regent due to the insanity of his father, Britain's King George III.

1818 Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte became King of Sweden and Norway.

1837 Evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody was born.

1840 John Boyd Dunlop, inventor of the pneumatic rubber tire, was born.
1840 Inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim was born.

1848 Outlaw Belle Starr was born.

1850 An adding machine employing depressible keys was patented in New Paltz, New York.

1859 Alexandru Ioan Cuza was elected Prince of Walachia.

1861 The moving picture peep show machine (kinematoscope) was patented by Samuel Goodale.

1878 Automobile pioneer André Citroën was born.

1881 Phoenix, Arizona, was incorporated.
1881 Historian Thomas Carlyle died.

1887 Verdi's opera "Otello" premiered at La Scala.

1891 Tennis player Elizabeth Ryan was born.

1897 The Indiana House of Representatives passed a measure redefining the method for determing the area of a circle, which included altering the value of pi.

1900 Politician Adlai Stevenson II was born.

1901 J. P. Morgan formed U. S. Steel Corporation.

1906 Actor John Carradine was born.

1907 French Premier Pierre E. J. Pflimlin was born.

1914 Author William Seward Burroughs was born.

1915 Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Hofstadter was born.

1917 Congress passed, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, an immigration act severely curtailing the influx of Asians.

1918 Stephen W. Thompson became the first U. S. pilot to down an enemy airplane.

1919 Actor Red Buttons was born.
1919 Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou was born.

1922 The first issue of Reader's Digest was published.
1922 Race car driver Alain de Changy was born.

1923 Country singer Claude King was born.

1924 The Royal Greenwich Observatory began broadcasting hourly time signals.

1928 Reverend Andrew M. Greeley was born.

1931 Maxine Dunlap became the first American woman to earn a glider pilot license.

1934 Baseball player Hank Aaron was born.

1936 The National Wildlife Federation was formed.

1937 U. S. President Franklin Roosevelt proposed increasing the number of Supreme Court Justices.
1937 Actor Stuart Damon was born.

1939 Financial writer Jane Bryant Quinn was born.

1941 Television producer-writer Stephen J. Cannell was born.
1941 Actor David Selby was born.
1941 Singer-songwriter Barrett Strong was born.

1942 Football player Roger Staubach was born.
1942 Singer Cory Wells was born.

1943 Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, was born.
1943 Movie director Michael Mann was born.

1944 Singer Al Kooper was born.

1946 Actress Charlotte Rampling was born.

1947 Bolewet Beirut became President of Poland.
1947 Race car Darrell Waltrip was born.

1948 Dick Button became the first American to earn an Olympic gold medal in men's figure skating.
1948 Guitarist David Denny was born.
1948 Actor Christopher Guest was born.
1948 Actress Barbara Hershey was born.

1949 Actor Tom Wilkinson was born.

1956 The 7th Winter Olympic Games closed at Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.

1960 Golfer Jane Geddes was born.

1961 Actor-comedian Tim Meadows was born.

1962 Actress Jennifer Jason Leigh was born.

1964 Rock singer Chris Barron was born.
1964 Actress Laura Linney was born.
1964 Rock musician Duff McKagan was born.

1967 Anastasio Somoza Debayle was elected President of Nicaragua.
1967 "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" premiered on CBS-TV.
1967 Businessman L. L. Bean died.

1969 Singer Bobby Brown was born.
1969 Actress Thelma Ritter died.

1971 Apollo 14 landed on the Moon.
1971 Country singer Sara Evans was born.

1972 U. S. airlines began mandatory inspection of passengers and baggage.
1972 Bob Douglas became the first black to be elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

1973 Services were held at Arlington National Cemetery for Army Lt. Col. William B. Nolde, the last official American combat casualty of the Vietnam War.
1973 The comic strip Hagar the Horrible debuted.

1974 The maximum speed on Germany's Autobahn was reduced to 100 kilometers per hour.

1981 Former Connecticut Governor Ella Grasso died.

1982 Suriname President Hendrick Chin A. Sen resigned and fled to the Netherlands.

1983 Former Nazi Gestapo official Klaus Barbie was expelled from Bolivia and taken to Lyon, France, to stand trial.

1986 Race car driver Reed Sorenson was born.

1988 The Arizona House of Representatives impeached Governor Evan Mecham.

1989 Kareem Abdul-Jabar became the first NBA player to score 38,000 points.
1989 Actor Jeremy Sumpter was born.

1991 A Michigan court ordered Dr. Jack Kevorkian to stop assisting in suicides.

1993 A grenade exploded in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, killing 63 persons and injuring 160 others.

1994 Byron De La Beckwith was sentenced to life in prison for killing Medgar Evers.
1994 A mortar bomb was set off in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, killing 68 persons and wounding 200 others.

1997 O. J. Sumpson was found civilly liable for the deaths of Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson.

2004 Twenty-three Chinese cockle-pickers drowned after being trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, England.

2005 President Gnassingbé Eyadéma of Togo died.

2006 The Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Seattle Seahawks 21-10 in Super Bowl XL.

2008 A tornado outbreak across the Southern United States left 58 persons dead.
2008 Larry LeSueur, CBS News radio reporter, died.
2008 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of Transcendental Meditation, died.

2009 The U. S. Navy guided missile cruiser Port Royal ran aground on a coral reef off Oahu, Hawaii.

2012 The New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots 21-17 in Super Bowl XLVI.

2017 The New England Patriots defeated the Atlanta Falcons 34-28 in Super Bowl LI.

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This page was last updated on February 05, 2019.