Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 5

This is a list of selected March 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.

← March 4	March 6 →

Staging area

Images

Use only ONE image at a time

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  The first soft gamma repeater was detected in the Large Magellanic Cloud
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  Artist's impression of Crispus Attucks, one of the people killed in the Boston Massacre
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  St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow
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  George Westinghouse
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  Winston Churchill
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  Winston Churchill
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  The Britannia Bridge, c. 1852
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  Sinclair ZX81
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  "Guerrillero Heroico" by Alberto Korda

Ineligible

Blurb	Reason
1811 – Peninsular War: In the Battle of Barrosa, an Anglo-Spanish-Portuguese force trying to lift the Siege of Cádiz was able to defeat a French attack, although they were ultimately unable to break the siege itself.	TFA for 2012
1850 – The Britannia Bridge, a tubular bridge of wrought iron rectangular box-section spans crossing the Menai Strait between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales, opened.	more footnotes
1872 – American entrepreneur and engineer George Westinghouse patented the air brake, allowing trains to stop more reliably.	globalize
1918 – Bolshevist Russia relocated its capital from Petrograd to Moscow.	Tagged with {{refimprove}}
1946 – The term "Iron Curtain", describing the symbolic, ideological, and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas during the Cold War, was popularized by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.	citation style, unreferenced section
1960 – British marine biologist Alister Hardy introduced his aquatic ape hypothesis, theorizing that swimming and diving for food exerted a strong evolutionary effect that was partly responsible for the divergence between the common ancestors of humans and other great apes.	locked for editing disputes
1966 – BOAC Flight 911 disintegrated and crashed near Mount Fuji shortly after departure from Tokyo International Airport, killing all 113 passengers and 11 crew members on board.	refimprove
1970 – The international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to limit the spread of nuclear weapons entered into force.	Tagged with {{refimprove}}

Eligible

• 1496 – King Henry VII of England issued letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorising them to explore unknown lands.

• 1940 – World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and the Politburo signed an order for the execution of about 22,000 Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war that were captured during the Soviet invasion of Poland.

• 1943 – The Gloster Meteor, the first operational jet fighter for the Allied Powers, had its first flight.

• 1960 – Cuban photographer Alberto Korda took his iconic photograph of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara (pictured).

• 1981 – The ZX81, a pioneering British home computer, was launched by Sinclair Research and went on to sell over 1.5 million units around the world.

• 1999 – Paul Okalik was elected as the first Premier of the Canadian territory of Nunavut.

March 5: St Piran's Day in Cornwall (United Kingdom); Casimir Pulaski Day in Illinois (2012); Lei Feng Day in the People's Republic of China

• 1616 – Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, describing his heliocentric theory of the solar system, was prohibited by the Roman Catholic Church.

• 1770 – British soldiers fired into a crowd in Boston, Massachusetts, killing five civilians (engraving pictured).

• 1824 – The First Anglo-Burmese War, the longest and most expensive war in British Indian history, began.

• 1936 – The prototype of the Supermarine Spitfire, a British single-seat fighter that was later used by the Royal Air Force and many other Allied countries during the Second World War, flew for the first time.

• 1975 – Computer hackers in Silicon Valley held the first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club, whose members would go on to have great influence on the development of the personal computer.

More anniversaries:

• March 4
• March 5
• March 6