What happened on March 5 ?

363 - Roman Emperor Julian moves from Antioch with an army of 90,000 to attack the Sassanid Empire, in a campaign which will bring to his own death.

1046 - Naser Khosrow begins the seven-year Middle Eastern journey which he will later describe in his book Safarnameh.

1496 - England King Henry VII issued letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorizing them to discover of unknown lands.

1689 - Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham is named Secretary of State for the Northern Department.

1766 - Antonio de Ulloa, the first Spanish governor of Louisiana, arrives in New Orleans.

1770 - Boston Massacre: Five Americans, including a black slave named Crispus Attucks, and a boy are killed by British troops in an event that would help start the American Revolutionary War five years later.

1784 - Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney is named President of the Board of Trade.

1793 - French troops are defeated by Austrian forces and Liège is recaptured.

1821 - James Monroe is inaugurated for a second term as President of the United States.

1824 - First Burmese War: The British officially declare war on Burma.

1836 - Samuel Colt makes the first production-model revolver (.34-caliber).

1842 - Over 500 Mexican troops led by Rafael Vasquez invade Texas, briefly occupy San Antonio and then head back to the Rio Grande.

1848 - Louis Antoine Garnier-Pages is named French minister of Finance.

1850 - The Britannia Bridge across the Menai Strait between the Isle of Anglesey and the mainland of Wales is opened.

1860 - Parma, Tuscany, Modena and Romagna vote in referenda to join Kingdom of Sardinia.

1861 - The "Stars and Bars" is adopted as the flag of the Confederate States of America.

1868 - A court of impeachment is organized in the United States Senate to hear charges against President Andrew Johnson.

1868 - Mefistofele, an opera by Arrigo Boito premieres at La Scala.

1872 - George Westinghouse patents the air brake.

1877 - Rutherford B. Hayes is publicly inaugurated as the 19th President of the United States (he was privately inaugurated on March 3).

1894 - Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery becomes First Lord of the Treasury.

1904 - Nikola Tesla, in Electrical World and Engineer, describes the process of ball lightning formation.

1905 - Russian troops begin to retreat from Mukden, Manchuria after losing 100,000 troops in three days.

1907 - The second Duma opens in St. Petersburg, Russia and 40,000 demonstrators have to be dispersed by Russian troops.

1912 - Italian forces are the first to use airships for military purposes, using them for reconnaissance behind Turkish lines.

1915 - World War I: LZ 33, a zeppelin, is damaged by enemy fire and stranded south of Ostend.

1916 - Spanish football club Real Club Deportivo Mallorca founded.

1917 - Woodrow Wilson is inaugurated for a second term as President of the United States.

1918 - Bolshevist Russia moves the national capital from Petrograd to Moscow.

1924 - Shefqet Verlaci becomes Prime Minister of Albania.

1931 - Daniel Salamanca Urey is named President of Bolivia.

1933 - Great Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares a "bank holiday", closing all United States banks and freezing all financial transactions.

1933 - In Germany, the Nazis win 44 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections.

1936 - First flight of fighter airplane Spitfire Type 300.

1940 - Members of Soviet politbiuro sign an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POW, known also as Katyn massacre.

1943 - First flight of Gloster Meteor jet aircraft in the United Kingdom.

1946 - Winston Churchill uses the phrase "Iron Curtain" in his speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.

1949 - The Jharkhand Party is founded in India.

1955 - President of Lithuania, Antanas Merkys dies, after having been imprisoned and deported to the Soviet Union.

1958 - Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is established.

1958 - Explorer 2 spacecraft launches, fails to reach Earth orbit.

1964 - Ceylon declares emergency crisis due to unrest.

1966 - A BOAC Boeing 707 jet crashes on Mount Fuji, Japan, killing 124.

1966 - In Luxembourg, Udo Jürgens wins the eleventh Eurovision Song Contest for Austria.

1966 - Bob Seagren vaults 5.19m, an indoor world record.

1968 - U.S. launches Solar Explorer B, aka Explorer 37 from Wallops Island to study the Sun.

1970 - A nuclear non-proliferation treaty goes into effect after ratification by 43 nations.

1970 - Dubnium atoms first detected conclusively.

1973 - Donald DeFreeze, future Symbionese Liberation Army leader, escapes from Vacaville Prison.

1974 - Yom Kippur War: Israeli forces withdrew from the west bank of the Suez Canal.

1976 - British pound falls below $2 U.S. for the first time.

1978 - Landsat 3 is launched from Vandenberg AFB in California.

1979 - Detection equipment picks up a gamma ray burst originating from the Large Magellanic Cloud, leading to the discovery of soft gamma repeaters.

1979 - Voyager 1's closest approach to Jupiter, 172000 miles.

1980 - Earth satellites record gamma rays from remnants of supernova N-49.

1982 - Venera 14, a Soviet satellite arrives at the planet Venus.

1983 - Bob Hawke becomes Australian prime minister after defeating Malcolm Fraser in Australian elections.

1984 - The Indian government order an attack on the Golden Temple.

1988 - Constitution of Turks and Caicos Islands restored and revised.

1991 - Iraq releases all Gulf War prisoners.

1998 - NASA announces that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon has found enough water to support a human colony.

1999 - Paul Okalik is elected first Premier of Nunavut.

2001 - In Mecca, 35 Muslim pilgrims are crushed to death during the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

2001 - In Santee, California, a school massacre occurs at Santana High School, leaving 2 dead and 15 wounded.

2003 - Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks provokes controversy in the U.S. by stating that the band was "ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."