March 5
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Featured Event
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-DIG-ggbain-04778)
Ernest Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition heads toward Mt. Erebus
On this day in 1908, Ernest Shackleton and a group of 14 men set out to climb a volcano. The British Antarctic expedition had sailed from England on the 200-ton Nimrod, determined to map previously uncharted territories. The group trudged toward Mt. Erebus—the southernmost active volcano in the world—until inclement weather stopped them. When the blizzard cleared, the men continued, reaching Mt. Erebus’s summit on March 10. The journey (which came to an end in 1909) marked one of the most successful Antarctic expeditions of the time. [Read today’s edition of Today in History > >]
Featured Biography
Featured Biography
Bettmann/Getty Images
Soong Mei-ling, born this day in 1897, was the wife of Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek, launched the anticommunist New Life Movement, and led the effort to secure Chiang’s release after his abduction in the Xi’an Incident.
Famous Birthdays
More on March 5
© Victor5490/Dreamstime.com
2013
Hugo Chávez—a populist who served as president of Venezuela from 1999 to 2013 and adopted an ideology, chavismo, that was rooted in the socialist political program of South American independence hero Simón Bolívar—died at age 58. [Sort fact from fiction in our South America quiz.]
Photo NASA/JPL/Caltech (NASA photo # PIA00343)
1979
The U.S. space probe Voyager 1 flew by Io, the innermost of Jupiter’s moons, and observed nine active volcanoes on its surface. Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. [Learn more about Io and its volcanoes.]
Everett Collection Historical/Alamy
1963
American country and western singer Patsy Cline—who was one of the classic performers of the genre, known for such ballads as I Fall to Pieces and Crazy—died in an airplane crash at age 30. [Test your musical knowledge.]
AFP/Getty Images
1955
Chinese author Mo Yan, who won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature for his imaginative and humanistic fiction, was born. [Discover how well you know the Nobel laureates in literature.]
Sovfoto
1953
Soviet premier Joseph Stalin died at age 74 and was succeeded by Georgy Malenkov. While he transformed the Soviet Union into a major world power, Stalin’s dictatorial rule was marked by paranoia and police terror. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about Russia.]
Karsh/Woodfin Camp and Associates
1946
British prime minister Winston Churchill popularized the term “Iron Curtain”—describing the ideological barrier created by the Soviet Union to separate itself and its eastern and central European allies from Western nations—in a speech at Fulton, Missouri. [Take our quiz about notable prime ministers.]
H. Roger-Viollet
1887
Brazilian musician and composer Heitor Villa-Lobos was born in Rio de Janeiro. His music combines indigenous Latin American melodic elements with Western classical music. [Take our composers quiz.]
© Universal History Archive—Universal Images Group/Getty Images
1871
Activist Rosa Luxemburg, who played a key role in the founding of the Polish Social Democratic Party and the Spartacus League, was born in Zamość, Poland. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about famous Europeans.]
Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.15
1798
Napoleon invaded Switzerland and occupied Bern, ending the ancient ruling system of that country, the Confederation of the Thirteen Cantons. [Was Napoleon actually short?]
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of Mrs. Russell Sage, 1910 (accession no. 10.125.103); www.metmuseum.org
1770
Harassed by a mob, British troops on this day in 1770 opened fire, killing Crispus Attucks and four others in the Boston Massacre, an event that galvanized anti-British feelings in the lead-up to the American Revolution. [What really happened at the Boston Massacre?]