February 5

AD 62 – Earthquake in Pompeii, Italy.
1597 – A group of early Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society.
1852 – The New Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, one of the largest and oldest museums in the world, opens to the public.
1869 – The largest alluvial gold nugget in history, called the “Welcome Stranger”, is found in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia.
1885 – King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo as a personal possession.
1917 – The Congress of the United States passes the Immigration Actof 1917 over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto.
1918 – SS Tuscania is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland; it is 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 – A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.
1971 – Astronauts land on the moon in the Apollo 14 mission.
2008 – A major tornado outbreak across the Southern United States kills 57.

976 – Sanjō, emperor of Japan (d. 1017)
1810 – Ole Bull, Norwegian violinist and composer (d. 1880)

Citroen Italian sculptor and industrial designer Flaminio Bertoni and the French aeronautical engineer Andre Lefebvre styled and engineered the car. Paul Mages developed the hydropneumatic self-levelling suspension. Is there a more beautiful automobile?

1837 – Dwight L. Moody, American evangelist and publisher, founded Moody Church, Moody Bible Institute, and Moody Publishers (d. 1899)
1840 – John Boyd Dunlop, Scottish businessman, co-founded Dunlop Rubber (d. 1921)
1840 – Hiram Maxim, American engineer, invented the Maxim gun (d. 1916)
1878 – André Citroën, French engineer and businessman, founded Citroën (d. 1935)
1900 – Adlai Stevenson II,  5th United States Ambassador to the United Nations (d. 1965)
1934 – Hank Aaron, American baseball player
1944 – Al Kooper, American singer-songwriter and producer

1790 – William Cullen, Scottish physician and chemist (b. 1710)
1957 – Sami Ibrahim Haddad, Lebanese surgeon and author (b. 1890)
2008 – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Indian guru, founded Transcendental Meditation (b. 1918)