#TodayInHistory – March 5

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March 5 – Some Important Events on this day

363 👉🏼 Roman Emperor Julian moves from Antioch with an army of 90,000 to attack the Sassanid Empire, in a campaign that brings about his own death
1046 👉🏼 Persian scholar Naser Khosrow begins the 7 year Middle Eastern journey which he will later describe in his book Safarnama ✍🏼
1179 👉🏼 3rd Lateran Council (11th ecumenical council) opens in Rome 🇮🇹
1496 👉🏼 English King Henry VII grants John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) a commission to explore for new lands
1558 👉🏼 Smoking tobacco introduced into Europe by Spanish physician Francisco Fernandes 🚬
1616 👉🏼 Astronomical work ‘de Revolutionibus’ by Nicolaus Copernicus placed on Catholic Forbidden index
1645 👉🏼 Battle of Jankau in Bohemia: Sweden defeats Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III
1770 👉🏼 Boston Massacre (Incident on King Street): British soldiers kill 5 men in a crowd throwing snowballs, stones and sticks at them. African American Crispus Attucks 1st to die and later held up as early black martyr. Massacre galvanizes anti-British feelings.
1774 👉🏼 John Hancock delivers the fourth annual Massacre Day oration, a commemoration of the Boston Massacre, and denounces the presence of British troops in Boston, enhancing Hancock’s stature as a leading Patriot

1853 👉🏼 Piano company Steinway & Sons founded by Heinrich Steinweg (later Henry Steinway) in New York City. Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg had been making pianos in his home town of Seesen, Germany since the 1820s before he emigrated to America and founded his company with his sons in Manhattan, New York. He received his first patent in 1857 and another 138 followed. The family anglicized their name from Steinweg to Steinway in 1864.
Since then the Steinway grand piano has dominated the high end of the piano market. Famous Steinway pianos include the 300,000th made for The White House in Washington and John Lennon’s upright piano on which he composed “Imagine”. It was sold for 1.6 million pounds to George Michael in 2000.

1904 👉🏼 Nikola Tesla describes the process of the ball lightning formation in Electrical World and Engineer
1933 👉🏼 Germany’s Nazi Party wins majority in parliament (43.9%-17.2M votes) 🇩🇪
1946 👉🏼 Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri, popularizes the term and draws attention to the division of Europe

1953 👉🏼 Dictator and mass murderer Stalin goes to his grave
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1960 👉🏼 Elvis Presley ends 2-year hitch in US Army. He was already the largest name in showbiz when he was conscripted in March 1958, after a short extension to complete the film “King Creole”. Against expectations he elected to serve a regular soldier and not in Special Services where he would just primarily perform for the troops. Elvis did his basic training in Fort Hood in Texas, living off base afterwards. His beloved mother Gladys took ill and died in August 1958, leaving him devastated. A month later he was attached to the 3rd Armored Division in Friedberg, West Germany, where he served the rest of his service, always under huge public scrutiny.