February 5

1576 – Henry of Navarre rejects Catholicism at Tours, France and rejoins the Protestant forces in the French Wars of Religion.

1597 – A group of Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society.

1849 – University of Wisconsin–Madison’s first class meets at Madison Female Academy.

1862 – The voivode of Moldavia and the warlords of ancient Wallachia formally unite to create the Romanian United Principalities with Alexandru Cuza as Domnitor.

1907 – Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland announces the creation of Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic.

1918 – West Plains, Missouri native, Lt. Stephen W. Thompson, flying with a French squadron as a bombardier/gunner, shoots down a German Albatros D.III over Saarbrucken, the first aerial victory by the U.S. military.
The British Anchor Line SS Tuscania is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland, the first ship carrying American troops to Europe to be torpedoed and sunk.

1919 – Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith launch United Artists.

1924 – The Royal Greenwich Observatory begins broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal.

1958 – Off Tybee Island near Savannah, Georgia, a US F-86 fighter collides mid-air with a US B-47 bomber carrying a Mark-15 thermonuclear bomb. While there are no fatalities or injuries, the crew of the bomber jettisons the bomb,  which has never been recovered, into the water near Wassaw Sound

1971 – Apollo 14 Astronauts Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Edgar D. Mitchell undock from the Command Module Kitty Hawk piloted by Stuart Roosa and land the Lunar Module Antares on the Frau Mauro highlands on the mission originally planned for Apollo 13.

1985 – Ugo Vetere, the mayor of Rome, and Chedli Klibi, the mayor of Carthage meet in Tunis to sign a treaty of friendship officially ending the 3rd Punic War which lasted 2,131 years.

1988 – Panamanian military dictator Manuel Noriega is indicted by federal grand juries in Miami and Tampa on drug smuggling and money laundering charges, eventually leading, in large part, to the U.S. invasion of Panama in late 1989.

2008 – A major tornado outbreak of 87 tornadoes across the southern U.S. and the lower Ohio Valley kills 57 people across four states and 18 counties, with hundreds of others injured.

2020 – President Donald Trump is acquitted by the United States Senate in his first impeachment trial.