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.