Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 5

This is a list of selected February 5 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.

To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.

← February 4	February 6 →

Staging area

Images

Use only ONE image at a time

• 
  Leopold II
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  Leopold II of Belgium
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  The "Welcome Stranger" gold nugget
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  Alexandru Ioan Cuza
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  Obelisk commemorating the discovery of the Welcome Stranger nugget
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  Bill Ponsford
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  A tulip from a 1637 Dutch catalog
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  John Edward Bouligny
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  Charles XIV John
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  USS Port Royal (CG-73) after having run aground on a coral reef

Ineligible

Blurb	Reason
Sapporo Snow Festival in Japan begins (2018)	primary sources
Kashmir Solidarity Day in Pakistan	stub
1637 – Ninety-eight sales for rare tulip bulbs were recorded on the last day of tulip mania, a speculative bubble in the Dutch Republic.	citations needed
1782 – Running out of medical supplies to combat scurvy, British troops surrendered to an allied Franco-Spanish force, completing the latter's invasion of the island of Minorca in the Mediterranean Sea.	refimprove
1862 – Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza merged his two principalities, Wallachia and Moldavia, to form the United Principalities, the core of the Romanian nation-state.	Cuza: refimprove; Principalities: lots of CN tags
1885 – Leopold II of Belgium established the Congo Free State as his personal possession in Africa through his organization International African Association and his private army, the Force Publique.	refimprove
1924 – Hourly Greenwich Time Signals from the Royal Greenwich Observatory were first broadcast by the BBC.	refimprove section
1963 – The European Court of Justice's ruling in Van Gend en Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen established the principle of direct effect, one of the basic tenets of European Union law.	refimprove
1988 – The first Red Nose Day raised £15 million in the United Kingdom for charity.	refimprove
1994 – The Army of Republika Srpska carried out the first of two bombardments against civilians in the marketplace in Sarajevo, which were the stated reason for NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces.	outdated

Eligible

• AD 62 – Pompeii was severely damaged by a strong earthquake, which may have been a precursor to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed the town 17 years later.
• 1783 – The first of five strong earthquakes hit the region of Calabria on the Italian Peninsula, killing more than 32,000 people over a period of nearly two months.
• 1818 – Charles XIV John (pictured) succeeded to the thrones of Sweden and Norway as the first monarch of the House of Bernadotte.
• 1861 – In a speech before the U.S. Congress, Representative John Edward Bouligny refused to join his fellow Louisiana congressmen in heeding the state's secession convention and resigning.
• 1869 – Prospectors in Moliagul, Australia, discovered the largest alluvial gold nugget ever found, known as the Welcome Stranger.
• 1917 – The U.S. Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson's veto to pass the Immigration Act of 1917, establishing new restrictions on immigrants, including the wholesale ban of people from much of Asia.
• 1923 – Australian cricketer Bill Ponsford made 429 runs to break the world record for the highest first-class score.
• 2000 – Second Chechen War: As the Battle of Grozny came to a close, Russian forces summarily executed at least 60 civilians in Grozny's Novye Aldi suburb.
• 2004 – The National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Haiti captured the city of Gonaïves, starting a coup d'état against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's government.
• 2008 – Eighty-seven tornadoes occurred over the course of the Super Tuesday tornado outbreak across multiple U.S. states, causing 56 deaths and over $1 billion in damage.
• 2004 – At least 21 cockle-gatherers were drowned by an incoming tide in Morecambe Bay, England, prompting the establishment of the British government's Gangmasters Licensing Authority.
• 2009 – The United States Navy guided missile cruiser Port Royal ran aground (pictured) on a coral reef off the island of Oahu.
• Born/died: | Philipp Spener |d|1705| William Cullen |d|1790| Johan Ludvig Runeberg |b|1804| Francisco Varallo |b|1910| Colin Robert Chase |b|1935| Gheorghe Hagi |b|1965| Neymar |b|1992

Notes

• 1169 Sicily earthquake appears on February 4, so Pompeii and Calabrian earthquakes should not appear in the same year
• Battle of Grozny (1999–2000) (same war) featured on February 6, so Novye Aldi massacre should not appear in the same year.

February 5: Constitution Day in Mexico (1917)

A device for producing Bakelite

• 1909 – Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announced his invention of Bakelite (production device pictured), the world's first synthetic plastic.
• 1913 – Claudio Monteverdi's last opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea, was performed theatrically for the first time in more than 250 years.
• 1958 – After a mid-air collision with a fighter plane during a practice exercise off Tybee Island, Georgia, a U.S. Air Force bomber jettisoned a Mark 15 nuclear bomb, which was presumed lost.
• 1985 – The mayors of Carthage and Rome signed a symbolic peace treaty to officially end the Third Punic War, 2,134 years after it began.
• 2019 – Pope Francis became the first pope to celebrate a papal Mass in the Arabian Peninsula.

• Marcus Ward Lyon Jr. (b. 1875)
• William Bostock (b. 1892)
• Margaret Oakley Dayhoff (d. 1983)
• Bhuvneshwar Kumar (b. 1990)

More anniversaries:

• February 4
• February 5
• February 6