^{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.