History of the Day for:
January 5
- 1759: George Washington marries Martha Dandridge Custis.
- 1776: The assembly of New Hampshire adopted its first state constitution.
- 1781: A British naval expedition led by Benedict Arnold burned Richmond, Va.
- 1809: The Treaty of Dardanelles was signed between Britain and France.
- 1919: The German Workers Party, later to be called the Nazi Party, was formed.
- 1925: Nellie Taylor Ross became the first female governor of a state when she assumed her duties as chief executive of Wyoming to finish out her late husband's term.
- 1927: Fox Studios exhibited Movietone, a medium which synchronized sound and motion pictures.
- 1933: Calvin Coolidge, the 30th U.S. president, died.
- 1934: Both the National and the American baseball leagues selected a uniform ball to be used by both leagues.
- 1940: The FCC heard the very first transmission of the breakthrough FM radio with its clearer, static-free signal.
- 1943: Educator and scientist George Washington Carver died in Tuskegee, Ala., at age 81.
- 1945: Pepe LePew made his debut in the Warner Bros. cartoon "Odor-able Kitty."
- 1956: Elvis Presley recorded "Heartbreak Hotel."
- 1957: Jackie Robinson announced his retirement from baseball.
- 1970: The daytime soap opera "All My Children" debuted on ABC.
- 1971: The Harlem Globetrotters had a 2,495-game winning streak snapped when they lost, 100-99, to the New Jersey Reds.
- 1972: U.S. President Richard Nixon signed a bill instructing NASA to begin research on a manned space shuttle.
- 1976: The Khmer Rouge promulgated a new constitution in Cambodia, renaming it Democratic Kampuchea.
- 1976: "The MacNeil-Lehrer Report" premiered on PBS.
- 1981: Police in England arrested Peter Sutcliffe, a truck driver later convicted of the "Yorkshire Ripper" murders of 13 women.
- 1993: With 94% of the votes, Reggie Jackson was inducted into Baseball's Hall of Fame.
- 1993: The oil tanker MV Braer runs aground on the coast of the Shetland Islands, spilling 84,700 tons of crude oil.
- 1993: Washington state executes Westley Allan Dodd by hanging (the first legal hanging in America since 1965).
- 1996: Hamas operative Yahya Ayyash is killed by an Israeli-planted booby-trapped cell phone.
- 2003: Police arrest seven suspects in connection with Wood Green ricin plot.
- 2005: Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, is discovered by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz using images originally taken on October 21, 2003, at the Palomar Observatory.