February 5th in History
The Beolit 39 radio by Bang & Olufsen, made from bakelite, the world’s first synthetic plastic
Today in History
- The largest alluvial gold nugget in history, the “Welcome Stranger,” weighing 214 pounds, is found in Australia (1869)
- King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo as a personal possession (1885)
- Leo Baekeland announces the creation of Bakelite, the world’s first synthetic plastic (1909)
- Greek military aviators perform the first naval air mission in history (1913)
- Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith found United Artists (1919)
- The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the Greenwich Time Signal (1924)
- Generalissimo Francisco Franco becomes leader of Spain (1939)
- The Tybee hydrogen bomb is lost off the coast of Savannah by the US Air Force. It is never recovered (1958)
- Apollo 14 lands on the Moon (1971)
- Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers (1994)
- The Patriots win Super Bowl LI in the first overtime game in Super Bowl history (2017)
Birthdays
- Robert Peel, UK prime minister and father of modern British policing (1788)
- John Boyd Dunlop, tire manufacturer (1940)
- Hiram Maxim, machine gun inventor (1840)
- André Citroën, car manufacturer (1878)
- Gabriel Voisin, pilot and aircraft manufacturer (1880)
- Adlai Stevenson II, US presidential candidate and UN ambassador (1900)
- John Carradine, actor (1906)
- William S. Burroughs, novelist (1914)
- Robert Hofstadter, physicist (1915)
- Red Buttons, actor (1919)
- Hank Aaron, baseball player (1934)
- H. R. Giger, sculptor and set designer (1940)
- Stephen J. Cannell, novelist and television producer (1941)
- Roger Staubach, football player (1942)
- Nolan Bushnell, founded Atari (1943)
- Charlotte Rampling, actress (1946)
- Christopher Guest, actor (1948)
- Jennifer Jason Leigh, actress (1962)
- Bobby Brown, singer-songwriter (1969)
Deaths
- Banjo Patterson, Australian poet, wrote “Waltzing Matilda” (1941)
- Thelma Ritter, actress (1969)
- Dean Jagger, actor (1991)
- William Pene du Bois, author (1993)
- Doug McClure, actor (1995)
- Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founded Transcendental Meditation (2008)
- Brian Jacques, author (2011)
Holidays and Celebrations
- Constitution Day (Mexico)
- Kashmir Solidarity Day (Pakistan)
- Liberation Day (San Marino)
- National Weatherperson’s Day (US)
- Runeberg’s Birthday (Finland)
- Unity Day (Burundi)
- World Nutella Day
February 5 is the 36th day of the year. There are 329 days (330 in leap years) remaining until the end of the year.