March 5: Fun Facts about Today in History

(March 05, 1770)
When British troops were attacked by a mob on this day in 1770, they opened fire, murdering Crispus Attucks and four others in the Boston Massacre, which sparked anti-British fervour in the years leading up to the American Revolution.

(March 05, 1946)
In a speech in Fulton, Missouri, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill popularised the term "Iron Curtain" to describe the separation of the Soviet Union and its eastern and central European allies from Western nations.

(March 05, 1953)
Georgy Malenkov succeeded Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, who died at the age of 74.

(March 05, 1955)
Mo Yan, a Chinese author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012 for his inventive and humanistic fiction, was born on this day.

(March 05, 1979)
Voyager 1, a NASA space mission, sailed by Io, Jupiter's innermost satellite, and discovered nine active volcanoes on its surface.

(March 05, 2013)
Hugo Chávez, a Venezuelan politician who served as the country's populist president from 1999 to 2013, and whose chavismo philosophy was based on the socialist political programme of South American independence hero Simón Bolvar, died at the age of 58.

(Died on March 05, 2017)
Kurt Moll, German opera singer (b. 1938).