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

Ineligible

Blurb	Reason
Sapporo Snow Festival in Japan begins (2018)	primary sources
; Constitution Day in Mexico (1917)	neutrality issues
Kashmir Solidarity Day	stub
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
1917 – The current constitution of Mexico was adopted, establishing a federal republic with powers separated into independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches.	neutrality issues
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

• 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 succeeded to the thrones of Sweden and Norway as the first monarch of the House of Bernadotte.
• 1869 – Prospectors in Moliagul, Victoria, 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.
• 1958 – A U.S. Mark 15 nuclear bomb disappeared off the shores of Tybee Island, Georgia, after it was jettisoned during a practice exercise when the bomber carrying it collided in midair with a fighter plane.
• 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 – Twenty-three cockle pickers drowned after being trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, England, an event that led to the establishment of the British government's Gangmasters Licensing Authority.
• 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.
• 2009 – The United States Navy guided missile cruiser Port Royal ran aground on a coral reef off the island of Oahu.
• Born/died: | Johan Ludvig Runeberg |b|1804| C. E. Brock |b|1870| William Bostock |b|1892| Francisco Varallo |b|1910| Josiah Thomas |d|1933| Peg Entwistle |b|1908| Margaret Oakley Dayhoff |d|1983| 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: Kashmir Solidarity Day in Pakistan

Buttons made from Bakelite

• 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.
• 1637 – The speculative bubble for rare tulip bulbs in the Dutch Republic burst, marking the decline of tulip mania.
• 1909 – Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announced the creation of Bakelite (samples pictured), the world's first synthetic plastic.
• 1941 – Second World War: British and Free French forces began the Battle of Keren to capture the strategic town of Keren in Italian Eritrea.
• 2004 – The Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front captured Gonaïves, Haiti, starting a coup d'état against the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

• Philipp Spener (d. 1705)
• Koto Matsudaira (b. 1903)
• Gheorghe Hagi (b. 1965)

More anniversaries:

• February 4
• February 5
• February 6