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List of December 5 Historical Events and Facts

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    1492 – Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola.
  • 1496 – King Manuel I of Portugal issues a decree of expulsion of “heretics” from the country.
  • 1775 – At Fort Ticonderoga, Henry Knox begins his historic transport of artillery to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  • 1831 – Former US President John Quincy Adams takes his seat in the House of Representatives.
  • 1847 – Jefferson Davis is elected to the US senate, his first political post.
  • 1848 – In a message before the US Congress, US President James K. Polk confirms that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.
  • 1876 – The Brooklyn Theater Fire kills at least 278 people in Brooklyn, NY.
  • 1914 – The Italian Parliament proclaims the neutrality of the country.
  • 1920 – Dimitrios Rallis forms a government in Greece.
  • 1932 – German-born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein is granted an American visa.
  • 1933 – Utah becomes the 36th US state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, thus establishing the required 75% of states needed to enact the amendment.
  • 1934 – Abyssinia Crisis: Italian troops attack Wal Wal in Abyssinia, taking four days to capture the city.
  • 1936 – The Soviet Union adopts a new constitution and the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic is established as a full Union Republic of the USSR.
  • 1941 – Georgy Zhukov launches a massive Soviet counter-attack against the German army, with the biggest offensive launched against Army Group Centre.
  • 1941 – World War II: Great Britain declares war on Finland, Hungary and Romania.
  • 1943 – World War II: US Army Air Force begins attacking Germany’s secret weapons bases in Operation Crossbow.
  • 1945 – Flight 19 is lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
  • 1952 – Great Smog of 1952: A cold fog descends upon London, combining with air pollution and killing at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that follow.
  • 1955 – The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge and form the AFL-CIO.
  • 1955 – E.D. Nixon and Rosa Parks lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
  • 1957 – Sukarno expels all Dutch people from Indonesia.
  • 1958 – Subscriber Trunk Dialling is inaugurated in the United Kingdom by Queen Elizabeth II when she speaks to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.
  • 1958 – The Preston bypass, the UK’s first stretch of motorway, opens to traffic for the first time..
  • 1964 – Vietnam War: For his heroism in battle earlier in the year, Captain Roger Donlon is awarded the first Medal of Honor of the war.
  • 1969 – The four node ARPANET network is established
    1976 – The United Nations General Assembly adopts Pakistan’s resolution on security of non-Nuclear States.
  • 1977 – Egypt breaks diplomatic relations with Syria, Libya, Algeria, Iraq and South Yemen.
  • The move is in retaliation for the Declaration of Tripoli against Egypt.
  • 1978 – The Soviet Union signs a “friendship treaty” with the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
  • 1983 – Dissolution of the Military Junta in Argentina.
  • 1983 – ICIMOD is established and inaugurated with its headquarters in Kathmandu, Nepal, and legitimised through an Act of Parliament in Nepal in the same year.
  • 1993 – The mayor of Wien , Helmut Zilk, is injured by a letter bomb.
  • 2005 – The Lake Tanganyika earthquake causes significant damage, mostly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
  • 2007 – Westroads Mall massacre: A gunman opens fire with a semi-automatic rifle at an Omaha, Nebraska mall, killing eight people before taking his own life.

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