On This Day
What Happened on January 5 in History
9 events that happened on January 5, oldest first. Every entry is written in our own words and links to its source.
Colonial America and the Revolution
1781
Benedict Arnold, now a British general, led Loyalist troops into Richmond, Virginia.
Arnold's force of about 1,600 sailed up the James River, landed at Westover and marched on the nearly undefended state capital. It was his greatest success as a British commander.
Source: history.com; battlefields.org
The Young Republic and the Civil War Era
1895
French army captain Alfred Dreyfus was publicly stripped of his rank after a treason conviction.
His stripes were torn off and his sword broken as he shouted his innocence, while a mob stirred by the antisemitic press jeered. The Dreyfus affair exposed deep antisemitism in France.
Source: encyclopedia.ushmm.org; history.com
The Early 1900s and the World Wars
1925
Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming became the first woman to serve as governor of a U.S. state.
She won a special election to succeed her husband, Governor William B. Ross, who had died in office in 1924. Her inauguration came about two weeks before Miriam Ferguson took office as governor of Texas.
Source: library.wyo.gov; origins.osu.edu
The Cold War
1949
Harry S. Truman called for a Fair Deal for every American in his State of the Union address.
Echoing Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Truman proposed national health insurance, public housing, civil rights legislation and federal aid to education.
Source: history.com; millercenter.org
1953
Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot premiered at a small theater in Paris.
The play opened at the Theatre de Babylone on the Left Bank to mixed reviews. Decades later, theater professionals polled in Britain named it the most important English-language play of the 20th century.
Source: history.com
1957
Dwight D. Eisenhower asked Congress to back a new Middle East policy, later called the Eisenhower Doctrine.
Eisenhower asked for authority to offer economic and military cooperation to friendly nations in the region and to use U.S. troops against communist aggression there. The policy made the Middle East a Cold War battleground.
Source: millercenter.org; history.com
1969
The Soviet Union launched Venera 5, a probe sent to study Venus.
Venera 5 was followed five days later by its twin, Venera 6. Both were part of the long Soviet Venera program of missions to Venus.
Source: nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov
1972
Richard Nixon approved development of the space shuttle, a reusable spacecraft.
Nixon and NASA Administrator James Fletcher announced the decision in San Clemente, California. The vehicle's formal name was the Space Transportation System.
Source: nasa.gov; presidency.ucsb.edu
1976
The Khmer Rouge proclaimed a new constitution renaming Cambodia as Democratic Kampuchea.
Pol Pot's communist regime used the document to legalize its rule. Over the next three years, its brutal policies caused the deaths of an estimated 1 million to 2 million Cambodians.
Source: history.com