Home > December 5

December 5 is the 339th day (340th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 26 days remaining.

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1 Events

• 1484 - Pope Innocent VIII writes a Papal Bull that sets the inquisition into full swing and kills hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of innocent people accused of being witches
• 1492 - Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
• 1560 - Francis II of France dies and is succeeded by Charles IX of France.
• 1766 - In LondonLondon is the capital of the United Kingdom and of England, and with over seven million inhabitants in the Greater London area, is the second-most populous conurbation in Europe (after Moscow). From being Londinium the capital of the Roman province of Bri, James Christie holds his first sale (he later founded Christie'sChristie's is a world famous auction house located in London, England. It was founded on December 5, 1766 by James Christie. Christie's quickly established a reputation for conducting some the greatest auctions of the 18th and 19th centuries. During this, the world's oldest auction house).
• 1776This article is about the year 1776. For the musical, see 1776 (musical Events January 10 Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense March 17 American Revolutionary War: British forces evacuate Boston, Massachusetts after George Washington places artillery overl - At the College of William and MaryThe College of William and Mary in Virginia is a public, liberal-arts university located in Williamsburg, Virginia. The College currently enrolls 5500 undergraduate and 2000 graduate students and is considered to be among the best institutions of higher l in Williamsburg, VirginiaWilliamsburg is a city located on the Virginia Peninsula in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 11,998. It is the county seat of James City County 6, although it is itself an independent city., the Phi Beta Kappa is founded as the first scholastic fraternityWhile the term fraternity can be used to describe any number of social organizations, including the Lions Club and the Shriners, fraternities and sororities are most commonly known as social organizations of higher education students in the United States in the United StatesThe United States of America also referred to as the United States U. America ¹ or the States is a federal republic in central North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west. It shares land borders with Canada in.
• 1831 - Former US President John Quincy Adams takes a seat in the United States House of Representatives.
• 1848 - California gold rush: In a message before the United States Congress, US President James Knox Polk confirms that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.
• 1873 - In Boston, Massachusetts, Warren Avenue Baptist Church sexton Thomas Piper strangles and beats to death his first victim, Bridget Landregan (the press later dubbed the then unknown serial killer "The Boston Belfry Murderer").
• 1926 - Sergei Eisenstein's " Battleship Potemkin," debuts
• 1932 - German physicist Albert Einstein granted a visa
• 1933 - Prohibition ends: Utah becomes the 36th U.S. state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 3/4th of states needed to enact the amendment (this overturned the 18th Amendment which had outlawed alcohol in the United States).
• 1934 - Italian troops attack Wal Wal in Ethiopia (it took four days to capture the city).
• 1936 - The Soviet Union adopts a new constitution.
• 1941 - The nonfiction book Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck is published (Steinbeck used knowledge gained writing this book to develop the marine biologist character Doc in Cannery Row).
• 1945 - Flight 19, a United States Navy training flight was lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
• 1952 - The Abbott and Costello Show starring comedians Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, debuts.
• 1955 - The trade unions American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations decided to merge and form the AFL-CIO.
• 1964 - Vietnam War: For his heroism in battle earlier in the year, Captain Roger Donlon of Saugerties, New York is awarded the first Medal of Honor of the war.
• 1974 - The last new episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus is broadcast on the BBC.
• 1978 - The Soviet Union signs a 'friendship treaty' with the communist government of Afghanistan.
• 1979 - Sonia Johnson is formally excommunicated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for her outspoken criticism of the church concerning the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
• 1992 - Kent Conrad of North Dakota resigns his seat in the United States Senate and is sworn into the other seat from North Dakota, becoming the only US Senator ever to have held two seats on the same day.
• 2003 - Johannes Heesters, the world's oldest living actor, turns 100.