February 5: Facts & Historical Events On This Day

US President Donald Trump was acquitted of impeachment charges by the US Senate.

Charges that Trump abused his power to aid his own re-election were dropped, despite overwhelming amounts of evidence laid against him. Republican senators resoundingly voted in favor of acquittal, with just one senator crossing party lines to vote for the then-president's incarceration.

The vice president of Google, Susan Wojcicki, became the CEO of YouTube.

The House of Commons voted in favor of same-sex marriage in the United Kingdom.

Same-sex marriages in England and Wales began at midnight on March 29, 2014.

The Morecambe Bay cockling disaster killed twenty-three people.

On this day, at around 21:30, a group of 35 Chinese immigrant cockle pickers became trapped by rising tides.

The Comic Relief charity created “Red Nose Day” in the United Kingdom, and raised £15 million ($19 million).

NASA’s Apollo 14 mission landed on the Moon.

The Apollo 14 mission was the third of the Apollo missions to land astronauts on the Moon and the eighth crewed mission of the Apollo program. The lunar lander experienced two major malfunctions, which almost caused the mission to be aborted. Fortunately, the astronauts were quick on their toes, and workarounds were found so that the mission went ahead as planned. The astronauts conducted two moonwalks where they collected large amounts of Moon rocks and set up several scientific experiments.

A nuclear bomb was lost off the coast of Georgia, US.

A B-457 bomber was conducting a training mission off the coast of Georgia near Tybee Island. The bomber collided with an F-86 fighter jet in midair, and the pilot jettisoned the bomb to avoid it exploding while the bomber made an emergency landing. There have been many attempts to locate the bomb, but it still hasn't been found.

Sweet rationing during World War II finally came to an end in Britain.

This news was a relief for many sweet and chocolate fans, who had been limited since July 26, 1942.

Mahatma Gandhi was released from prison after two years into his six-year sentence.

The general interest family magazine Reader’s Digest was first published.

The first motion picture was shown to a theater audience at the Philadelphia Academy of Music.

The world’s largest golden nugget was discovered.

It was discovered in Moliagul, Victoria, Australia, by Job Deason and Richard Oates and weighs 214 lb (97.14 kg).

Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, arrived from England in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to become a minister in a Boston church.

The government executed a group of Japanese Catholic Christians (known as the 26 Martyrs) as they were deemed too dangerous to Japan’s way of life.