This Day in History on 5 January

The historical events hold a lot of value for aspirants who are sitting for UPSC competitive exams including that of the IAS Exam.

On this page, we will list all historical events that have occurred on 5 January. The students can refer them while preparing for all competitive exams and banking exams.

Important Days

National Bird Day

National Whipped Cream Day


Important Events

Kappa Alpha Psi

1659, 5th Jan: Aurangzegb defeated Shah Shuja in the Battle of Khajwah.

1671, 5th Jan: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj captured Salher from the Mughals.

1919, 5th Jan: The German Workers’ Party formed. This party later transformed into the Nazi Party.

Vladimir Lenin

1933, 5th Jan: Construction began on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

1948, 5th Jan: Warner Bros. released the world’s first color film of the Rose Bowl football tournament.

1957, 5th Jan: The Central Sales Tax Act had introduced in India.

1970, 5th Jan: A 7.7-magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale killed 15,000 people in China’s Yunnan province.

1998, 5th Jan: The Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize awarded to a German sociologist Gerhard Fischer by the President of India for his work in India in the field of leprosy and polio control.

2014, 5th Jan: A launch of the communication satellite GSAT-14 aboard the GSLV MK II D5 marked the first successful flight of an Indian cryogenic engine.

1911: Kappa Alpha Psi, the world’s third oldest and largest black fraternity, is founded at Indiana University.

1912: The 6th All-Russian Conference of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Prague Party Conference) opens. In the course of the conference, Vladimir Lenin and his supporters break from the rest of the party to form the Bolshevik movement.

2014: A launch of the communication satellite GSAT-14 aboard the GSLV MK.II D5 marks the first successful flight of an Indian cryogenic engine.


Births/Birth Anniversary

1592: Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal emperor.

1855: King Camp Gillette, an American businessman. He invented a best-selling version of the safety razor.

Paramahansa Yogananda

1880: Barindra Kumar Ghosh, an Indian revolutionary and journalist.

1928: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the 9th Prime Minister of Pakistan.

1932: Kalyan Singh, former Governor of Rajasthan.

1934: Murli Manohar Joshi, an Indian politician, and physicist.

Murli Manohar
Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi

1941: Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, an Indian cricketer and former captain of the Indian cricket team.

1955: Mamata Banerjee, an Indian politician, and 8th Chief Minister of West Bengal.

1975: Bradley Cooper, an American actor, and filmmaker.

Mamata Banerjee
Deepika Padukone

1986: Deepika Padukone, an Indian actress, and producer.

1893: Paramahansa Yogananda, Indian-American guru and philosopher


Deaths/Death Anniversary

Victor Hope

1933: Calvin Coolidge, an American politician, lawyer, and the 30th president of the United States.

1943: George Washington Carver, an American agricultural scientist, and inventor.

1952: Victor Hope, 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow, Scottish colonel and politician, 46th Governor-General of India (b. 1887)

1970: Max Born, a German physicist, and mathematician.

Thomas Bopp
Karin von Aroldingen

1982: C. Ramchandra, an Indian music composer.

1990: Ramesh Behl, an Indian film director, and producer.

2007: Momofuku Ando, a Taiwanese-Japanese inventor, and businessman. He is known as the inventor of instant noodles.

Bernice Sandler
Dragoslav Šekularac

2018: Thomas Bopp, American astronomer best known as the co-discoverer of comet Hale–Bopp (b. 1949)


2018: Karin von Aroldingen, German ballerina (b. 1941)


2019: Bernice Sandler, American women’s rights activist (b. 1928)


2019: Dragoslav Šekularac, Serbian footballer and manager (b. 1937)

Futher Reading

Month-wise This Day in History