History of the Day for:
February 5
- 1778: The Articles of Confederation were ratified by South Carolina, the first state to do so.
- 1825: Hannah Lord Montague of New York created the first detachable shirt collar.
- 1846: The Oregon Spectator became the first U.S. newspaper published on the West Coast.
- 1917: Over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, Congress passed an immigration act severely curtailing the influx of Asians.
- 1921: The Yankees purchased 20 acres in the Bronx for Yankee Stadium.
- 1922: Reader's Digest magazine was first published.
- 1927: Buster Keaton's movie "The General" was released and bombed.
- 1936: The National Wildlife Federation was founded.
- 1937: The first Charlie Chaplin talkie, "Modern Times," was released, marking his last appearance as the Little Tramp.
- 1942: "Woman of the Year," starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, opened at Radio City Music Hall.
- 1945: U.S. troops under General Douglas MacArthur entered Manilla in the Philippines in World War II.
- 1956: The seventh Winter Olympic games closed at Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.
- 1971: Apollo 14, the third U.S. manned expedition to the moon, landed near Fra Mauro. Alan Shepard and Edward Mitchell walked on the moon for 4 hours.
- 1972: U.S. airlines began mandatory inspection of passengers and baggage as required by the federal government to cut down on hijacking.
- 1973: The comic strip "Hagar The Horrible" debuted.
- 1983: Former Nazi Gestapo official Klaus Barbie was brought to Lyon, France, to stand trial for alleged war crimes after being expelled from Bolivia.
- 1988: The Arizona House impeached Gov. Evan Mecham, setting the stage for his trial and conviction in the state Senate.
- 1991: A Michigan court barred Dr. Jack Kevorkian from assisting the terminally ill who wish to commit suicide.
- 1994: White separatist Byron De La Beckwith was convicted in Jackson, Miss., of murdering civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963.
- 1994: During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina more than 60 people are killed and some 200 wounded as a mortar shell slams into a downtown marketplace in Sarajevo.
- 1997: The so-called Big Three banks in Switzerland announce the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families.
- 2004: Twenty-three Chinese people drown when a group of 35 cockle-pickers are trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, England. Twenty-one bodies are recovered.
- 2004: Rebels from the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front capture the city of Gonaïves, starting the 2004 Haiti rebellion.
- 2008: A major tornado outbreak across the Southern United States leaves 57 dead, the most since the May 31, 1985 outbreak that killed 88.
- 2009: The United States Navy guided missile cruiser Port Royal runs aground off Oahu, Hawaii, damaging the ship as well as a coral reef.