TODAY IN HISTORY ― MARCH 5

March 5 is the 64th day of the year (65th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 301 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Thursday or Saturday (58 in 400 years each) than on Tuesday or Wednesday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Friday or Sunday (56). 

NATIONAL FROZEN FOOD DAY  

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

1496 – King Henry VII of England issues letters patent to John Cabot and his sons, authorising them to explore unknown lands.

1616 – Nicolaus Copernicus's book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium–On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres–is banned by the Catholic Church, more than 70 years after it's publication. 

1770 – The Boston Massacre: Five Americans, including Crispus Attucks, are fatally shot by British troops in an event that would contribute to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War (also known as the American War of Independence) five years later.

1836 – Gun maker Samuel Colt patents the first production-model revolver, the .34-caliber.

1872 – American entrepreneur and engineer, George Westinghouse, patents the air brake.

1906 – The Philippine Moro Rebellion: United States Army troops bring overwhelming force against the native Moros in the First Battle of Bud Dajo, leaving only six survivors.

1931 – The British Viceroy of India, Governor-General Edward Frederick Lindley Wood and Mohandas Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) sign an agreement envisaging the release of political prisoners and allowing salt to be freely used by the poorest members of the population.

1933 – Adolf Hitler's Nazi (National Socialist) Party receives 43.9% at the Reichstag elections. This later allows the Nazis to pass the Enabling Act and establish a dictatorship.

1940 – Six high-ranking members of Soviet politburo, including General Secretary Joseph Stalin, sign an order for the execution of 25,700 Polish intelligentsia, including 14,700 Polish POWs, in what will become known as the Katyn massacre.

1944 – World War II: The Red Army begins the Uman–Botoșani Offensive in the western Ukrainian SSR.

1946 – Winston Churchill coins the phrase "Iron Curtain" in his speech at Westminster College, Missouri. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”

1970 – The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty goes into effect after ratification by 43 nations.

1974 – The Yom Kippur War: Israeli forces withdraw from the west bank of the Suez Canal.

1979 – Soviet probes Venera 11, Venera 12 and the German-American solar satellite Helios II all are hit by "off the scale" gamma rays leading to the discovery of soft gamma repeaters.

1979 – America's Voyager 1 spacecraft has its closest approach to Jupiter, 172,000 miles.

1984 – Six thousand miners in the United Kingdom begin their strike at Cortonwood Colliery.

2003 – In Haifa, 17 Israeli civilians are killed by in the Haifa bus 37 suicide bombing.


TODAY's BIRTHS

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.