December 5 in history

On December 5:

63 BC Cicero read the last of his Catiline Orations.

663 – Fourth Council of Toledo.

1360 The French Franc was created.

 1408 – Emir Edigu of Golden Horde reached Moscow.

 

1484  Pope Innocent VIII issued the Summis desiderantes, a papal bull that deputised Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger as inquisitors to root out alleged witchcraft in Germany and led to one of the most oppressive witch hunts in European history.

1492  Christopher Columbus became the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola, now Haiti.

1496 – King Manuel I of Portugal issued  a decree of expulsion of “heretics” from the country.

1590 – Niccolò Sfondrati became Pope Gregory XIV.

1766  James Christie held his first sale.

 

1830 Christina Rossetti, English poet, was born  (d. 1894).

1839 George Armstrong Custer, American general, was born  (d. 1876).

1848 California Gold Rush: US President James K. Polk confirmed that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.

 

1859 John Jellicoe, British admiral, was born (d. 1935).

1872  Harry Nelson Pillsbury, American chess player, was born  (d. 1906).

1879  Clyde Cessna, American aeroplane manufacturer, was born (d 1954).

 

1890 New Zealand’s first one-man-one-vote election took place.

1901 Walt Disney, American animated film producer, was born (d. 1966).

1932  German-born Swiss physicist  Albert Einstein was granted an American visa.

1932  Little Richard, American singer and pianist, was born.

1933 Prohibition in the United States ended when : Utah ratified the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to enact the amendment (this overturned the 18th Amendment which had made the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcohol illegal in the United States).

 

1938  J. J. Cale, American songwriter, was born.

1943  Abyssinia Crisis: Italian troops attacked Wal Wal in Abyssinia, taking four days to capture the city.

1936 The Soviet Union adopted a new constitution and the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic was established as a full Union Republic of the USSR.

1945 Flight 19 was lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

1955 E.D. Nixon and Rosa Parks led the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

 

 

1957 Sukarno expelled all Dutch people from Indonesia.

1958  Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) was inaugurated in the UK by Queen Elizabeth II when she spoke to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.

1958 The Preston bypass, the UK‘s first stretch of motorway, opened to traffic for the first time.

1963 Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards, English ski jumper was born.

1964 Captain Roger Donlon was awarded the first Medal of Honor of the Vietnam War.

1983  Dissolution of the Military Junta in Argentina.

2005 – The Lake Tanganyika earthquake caused significant damage, mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

2005 The Civil Partnership Act came into effect in the United Kingdom, and the first civil partnership was registered there.

2006 Commodore Frank Bainimarama overthrew the government in Fiji.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia