January 5 birthdays & history

Famous people born on January 5

• 1932Umberto Eco, Italian novelist, literary critic, and philosopher
• 1876Konrad Adenauer, German lawyer and politician, Chancellor of West Germany
• 1975Bradley Cooper, American actor and producer
• 1941Hayao Miyazaki, Japanese animator, director, and screenwriter
• 1846Rudolf Christoph Eucken, German philosopher and author, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1946Diane Keaton, American actress, director, and businesswoman
• 1969Marilyn Manson, American singer-songwriter, actor, and director
• 1931Robert Duvall, American actor and director
• 1986Deepika Padukone, Indian actress
• 1938Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Kenyan author and playwright

What happened on January 5

• 1875The Palais Garnier, one of the most famous opera houses in the world, is inaugurated in Paris.
• 1911Kappa Alpha Psi, the world's third-oldest and largest black fraternity, is founded at Indiana University.
• 1912The sixth All-Russian Conference of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Prague Party Conference) opens. In the course of the conference, Vladimir Lenin and his supporters break from the rest of the party to form the Bolshevik movement.
• 1914The Ford Motor Company announces an eight-hour workday and minimum daily wage of $5 in salary plus bonuses.
• 1925Nellie Tayloe Ross was inaugurated as Governor of Wyoming, the first woman to serve as the governor of a U.S. state.
• 1933Construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge across the Straits of the Golden Gate, the entrance to San Francisco Bay.
• 1944The Daily Mail becomes the first major London newspaper to be published on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
• 1949In his State of the Union speech, U.S. president Harry S. Truman announced: "Every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his government a fair deal."
• 2005The dwarf planet Eris was discovered by a team using images from the Samuel Oschin telescope at Palomar Observatory.
• 2007The Taiwan High Speed Rail opened, connecting Taipei and Kaohsiung.
• 2008Mikheil Saakashvili was decisively re-elected as President of Georgia in "the first genuinely competitive presidential election" in the history of the country.
• 2009In Eng Foong Ho v Attorney-General, the Court of Appeal of Singapore held that equality before the law was satisfied by a "reasonable nexus" between state action and the object of the law.

Also observed on January 5

• Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival (Harbin, China)
• Joma Shinji (Japan)
• National Bird Day (United States)
• The Twelfth day of Christmas and the Twelfth Night of Christmas. (Western Christianity)