What Happened on July 5th in History
30 historical events on this date
Korean War: Task Force Smith: American and North Korean forces first clash, in the Battle of Osan.
The Korean War was an armed conflict fought on the Korean Peninsula between North Korea and South Korea and their allies. North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union, while South Korea...
The BBC broadcasts its first daily television news bulletin.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster that serves as the primary national public broadcasting company of the United Kingdom, headquartered at...
Elvis Presley records his first single, "That's All Right", at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee.
Elvis Aaron Presley was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is widely regarded as one of the most culturally significant figures of the 20th century....
The official independence of Algeria is proclaimed after an eight-year-long war with France.
Independence Day, observed annually on 5 July, is a National Holiday in Algeria commemorating colonial Algerian independence from France on 5 July 1962.
Air Canada Flight 621 crashes in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, killing all 109 people on board.
On July 5, 1970, Air Canada Flight 621, a Douglas DC-8-63 registered as CF-TIW, was flying from Montreal-Dorval International Airport, Quebec, Canada to Los Angeles International Airport,...
The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years, is formally certified by President Richard Nixon.
The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution establishes a nationally standardized highest permissible minimum age of 18 for participation in state and federal elections. It was...
A boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion (BLEVE) in Kingman, Arizona, following a fire that broke out as propane was being transferred from a railroad car to a storage tank, kills eleven firefighters.
A boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion is an explosion caused by the rupture of a vessel containing a pressurized liquid that has attained a temperature sufficiently higher than its boiling...
Juvénal Habyarimana seizes power over Rwanda in a coup d'état.
Juvénal Habyarimana was a Rwandan politician and military officer who was the second president of Rwanda, from 1973 until his assassination in 1994. He was nicknamed Kinani, a Kinyarwanda word...
Arthur Ashe becomes the first black man to win the Wimbledon singles title.
Arthur Robert Ashe Jr. was an American professional tennis player. He won three Grand Slam titles in singles and two in doubles. Ashe was the first Black player selected to the United States Davis...
Cape Verde gains its independence from Portugal.
Cape Verde, in Portuguese Cabo Verde, in Cape Verdean Creole Kabu Verdi, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an archipelagic country in the central Atlantic Ocean off the coast of West Africa....
The Pakistan Armed Forces under Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq seize power in Operation Fair Play and begin 11 years of martial law. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the first elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, is overthrown.
The Pakistan Armed Forces are the military forces of Pakistan. It is the world's seventh-largest military measured by active military personnel and consists of three uniformed servicesâthe Army,...
Swedish tennis player Björn Borg wins his fifth Wimbledon final and becomes the first male tennis player to win the championships five times in a row (1976â1980).
Björn Rune Borg is a Swedish former professional tennis player. He was ranked as the world No. 1 in men's singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for 109 weeks. Borg won 66 singles...
The United States Supreme Court gives its United States v. Leon decision providing a good-faith exception from the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule against use of evidence obtained through defective warrants in criminal trials.
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over...
Sri Lankan Civil War: The LTTE uses suicide attacks on the Sri Lankan Army for the first time. The Black Tigers are born and, in the following years, will continue to kill with the tactic.
The Sri Lankan civil war was fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, it was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam led by...
IranâContra affair: Oliver North is sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell to a three-year suspended prison term, two years probation, $150,000 in fines and 1,200 hours community service. His convictions are later overturned.
The IranâContra affair, also referred to as the IranâContra scandal, the Contragate, Iran Initiative, or simply IranâContra, was a political scandal in the United States that centered on arms...
Jeff Bezos founds Amazon.
Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American businessman, and the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and cloud computing company. According...
Armenia adopts its constitution, four years after its independence from the Soviet Union.
Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the Armenian highlands of West Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the...
Dolly the sheep becomes the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.
Dolly was a female Finn-Dorset sheep and the first mammal that was cloned from an adult somatic cell. She was cloned by associates of the Roslin Institute in Scotland, using the process of nuclear...
Sri Lankan Civil War: Sri Lankan Tamil MP A. Thangathurai is shot dead at Sri Shanmuga Hindu Ladies College in Trincomalee.
The Sri Lankan civil war was fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, it was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam led by...
U.S. President Bill Clinton imposes trade and economic sanctions against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the...
The World Health Organization announces that the 2002â2004 SARS outbreak has been contained.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in...
The first direct Indonesian presidential election is held.
Direct election is a system of choosing political officeholders in which the voters directly cast ballots for the persons or political party that they want to see elected. The method by which the...
North Korea tests four short-range missiles, one medium-range missile and a long-range Taepodong-2. The long-range Taepodong-2 reportedly fails in mid-air over the Sea of Japan.
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the...
A series of violent riots break out in ĂrĂŒmqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China.
A series of violent riots over several days broke out on 5 July 2009 in ĂrĂŒmqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in northwestern China. The first day's rioting, which...
The largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever discovered in Britain, consisting of more than 1,500 items, is found near the village of Hammerwich, near Lichfield, Staffordshire.
The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early...
The Shard in London is inaugurated as the tallest building in Europe, with a height of 310 metres (1,020Â ft).
The Shard, also referred to as the Shard London Bridge and formerly London Bridge Tower, is a 95-storey mixed-use development supertall pyramid-shaped skyscraper, designed by the Italian architect...
The Juno space probe arrives at Jupiter and begins a 20-month survey of the planet.
Juno is a NASA space probe orbiting the planet Jupiter. Built by Lockheed Martin and operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station...
British government ministers Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak resign from the second Johnson ministry, beginning the July 2022 United Kingdom government crisis.
Sir Sajid Javid is a British former politician who served as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from June 2021 to July 2022, having previously served as Home Secretary from 2018 to 2019...
The last Ariane 5 rocket is launched, carrying the Heinrich Hertz and Syracuse 4B satellites.
Ariane 5 is a retired European heavy-lift space launch vehicle operated by Arianespace for the European Space Agency (ESA). It was launched from the Guiana Space Centre (CSG) in French Guiana. It...
Keir Starmer is appointed Prime Minister by Charles III, becoming the first Labour prime minister since Gordon Brown in 2010 and the first one to win a general election since Tony Blair at the 2005 general election
Sir Keir Rodney Starmer is a British politician and former lawyer who has served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 2024 and as Leader of the Labour Party since 2020. He served as Leader...