On This Day
What Happened on February 5 in History
9 events that happened on February 5, oldest first. Every entry is written in our own words and links to its source.
Colonial America and the Revolution
1777
Georgia adopts its first state constitution, which abolishes primogeniture and entail.
The revolutionary constitution created a one-house legislature and ended old English rules that passed estates whole to the eldest son. It also divided the state into counties.
Source: history.com; avalon.law.yale.edu
The Early 1900s and the World Wars
1917
Mexico adopts the constitution that still governs the country today.
Written during the Mexican Revolution, it limited the power of the Catholic Church, put land and subsoil resources under national ownership, and set out labor rights such as the eight-hour day.
Source: history.com
1917
The last U.S. troops of the Pershing expedition leave Mexico, ending the hunt for Pancho Villa.
General John J. Pershing had led soldiers into northern Mexico in March 1916 after Villa's raid on Columbus, New Mexico. They never caught Villa, and with war with Germany looming, President Wilson ordered them home.
Source: history.com; archives.gov
1919
Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith found United Artists.
Hollywood's biggest stars set up their own company so they could control and distribute their films without the major studios. United Artists went on to release many classic movies over the following decades.
Source: history.com
1937
Franklin Roosevelt proposes adding up to six justices to the Supreme Court.
Frustrated that the Court had struck down New Deal laws, Roosevelt asked for a new justice for each sitting member over the age of 70 and a half. Critics called it court packing, and Congress rejected the plan, though the Court began upholding New Deal measures that spring.
Source: history.com; archive.nytimes.com
The Cold War
1958
An Air Force bomber drops a nuclear weapon into the sea near Tybee Island, Georgia, after a midair collision.
A B-47 collided with an F-86 fighter during a training flight, and the crew jettisoned the bomb before landing the damaged plane. Weeks of searching failed to find it, and the Air Force declared it irretrievable.
Source: npr.org
1971
Apollo 14 lands on the Moon, with Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell aboard the lunar module Antares.
They touched down in the Fra Mauro highlands, the target of the aborted Apollo 13 mission. Shepard, the first American in space, became the only Mercury astronaut to walk on the Moon and famously hit golf balls there.
Source: nasa.gov
The Modern Era
1994
Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
Two trials in 1964 had ended with all-white juries unable to reach verdicts. After new evidence came to light, a racially mixed jury in Mississippi found him guilty three decades after the killing, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
Source: history.com; pbs.org
2003
Secretary of State Colin Powell presents the U.S. case against Iraq to the UN Security Council.
Powell argued that Saddam Hussein's government was hiding weapons of mass destruction. The United States led an invasion of Iraq the next month, and no such stockpiles were found, a failure Powell later called a blot on his record.