December 5 birthdays & history

Famous people born on December 5

• 1901Walt Disney, American animator, director, producer, and screenwriter, co-founded The Walt Disney Company
• 1782Martin Van Buren, American lawyer and politician, 8th President of the United States
• 1901Werner Heisenberg, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1443Pope Julius II, Head of the Catholic Church from 1503 to 1513
• 1803Fyodor Tyutchev, Russian poet and diplomat
• 1868Arnold Sommerfeld, German physicist and academic
• 1890Fritz Lang, Austrian-American director, producer, and screenwriter
• 1903C. F. Powell, English-Italian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1932Sheldon Glashow, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1946José Carreras, Spanish tenor and actor

What happened on December 5

• 1831Former U.S. President John Quincy Adams takes his seat in the House of Representatives.
• 1847Jefferson Davis is elected to the U.S. Senate.
• 1848California Gold Rush: In a message to the United States Congress, U.S. President James K. Polk confirms that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.
• 1895New Haven Symphony Orchestra of Connecticut performs its first concert.
• 1914The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition began in an attempt to make the first land crossing of Antarctica.
• 1935Mary McLeod Bethune founds the National Council of Negro Women in New York City.
• 1936The 1936 Soviet constitution, also known as the "Stalin constitution", was adopted.
• 1955The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge and form the AFL–CIO.
• 1958Britain's first motorway, the Preston Bypass, opened to the public.
• 1958Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) is inaugurated in the United Kingdom by Queen Elizabeth II when she speaks to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.
• 1972Gough Whitlam took office as the 21st Prime Minister of Australia and formed a duumvirate with his deputy Lance Barnard, ending 23 years of Liberal–Country Party government.
• 1977Egypt breaks diplomatic relations with Syria, Libya, Algeria, Iraq and South Yemen in retaliation to preventing President Anwar el-Sadat from pursuing negotiations with Israel at the Tripoli confer.

Also observed on December 5

• Children's Day (Suriname)
• Discovery Day (Haiti and Dominican Republic)
• International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development
• Klozum (Schiermonnikoog, Netherlands)
• The King Bhumibol Adulyadej Memorial Birthday (Thailand)
• World Soil Day