5th December anniversaries

• Birth
  • 1859
  • "Birth of John Jellicoe, British admiral of the fleet during World War I"
• event
  • 1492
  • Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola.
  • 1765
  • Christie's auction house founded in London by James Christie
  • 1908
  • The first American football game in which the players wore numbered uniforms was played at the University of Pittsburgh.
  • 1933
  • United States
  • Prohibition was repealed in the USA after more than 13 years .
  • 1958
  • "Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) began operating in the UK, though initially only in the Bristol area. The Queen made the first call."
  • 1958
  • "Britain’s first motorway, the Preston bypass, was opened by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan."
  • 1978
  • The USSR signed a ‘friendship treaty’ with Afghanistan .
  • 1988
  • American TV evangelist Jim Bakker was charged with 24 counts of fraud and conspiring to defraud churchgoers of $158 million.
  • 1993
  • American astronauts repaired the faulty Hubble space telescope by fitting corrective optics.
  • 2005
  • Great Britain
  • The Civil Partnership Act comes into force in Britain
• Death
  • 1926
  • "Death of Claude Monet, French artist"
  • 1983
  • "Death of Robert Aldrich, American film director, writer and producer (‘The Dirty Dozen’, ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’ etc)."