February 5 - the day in history

Tipu Sultan was defeated in war with British on this day on 1792.

Today is Saturday, February 5, the thirty sixth day of 2005.
There are 329 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1679 - Peace of Nijmegen is declared between Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I and France's King Louis XIV.

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1782 - Spanish forces capture Minorca Island, off Spain, from British.
1792 - Mysore's Tipu Sultan is defeated in war with British.

1811 - British Regency Act is passed, whereby the Prince of Wales becomes Prince Regent during King George III's temporary insanity.
1885 - Congo state is established as a personal possession of Belgium's King Leopold II.
1887 - Verdi's opera Otello premieres at La Scala, in Milan, Italy.

1917 - Mexico becomes a federated republic of 28 states; US Congress passes, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, a law severely curtailing the immigration of Asians.
1958 - Gamel Abdel Nasser is formally nominated to become the first president of the new United Arab Republic.
1962 - France's President Charles de Gaulle calls for independence for Algeria on basis of friendly cooperation with France.
1971 - US Apollo 14 astronauts land on Moon.
1976 - Earthquake in Guatemala takes almost 23,000 lives.
1990 - Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, addressing the party plenum, says the Communist Party must abandon its monopoly on power.
1991 - Iraq, under attack by the US and its allies, suspends fuel sales to its citizens.
1992 - UN declines deployment of 10,000-man UN peacekeeping force in Yugoslavia.
1993 - Up to 200 Somali youths hurl rocks at US forces and set tire barricades ablaze in the belief that American troops shot to death a Somali man.
1994 - A single mortar shell kills 68 people in a Sarajevo marketplace; White separatist Byron de la Beckwith is convicted in Jackson, Mississippi for murdering civil rights leader Medgar Evers, three decades earlier.
1997 - Three Swiss banking giants announce they will contribute US$71 million to open a humanitarian fund for Holocaust victims.
1998 - More than 600,000 plantation workers in Sri Lanka go on strike for higher wages, crippling key sectors of the country's economy. They return to work ten days later.
1999 - The 80-year-old President Nelson Mandela of South Africa delivers his last major address to Parliament.

2001 - Four men go on trial in New York in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa, which killed 224 people; Blast in Moscow subway injures at least nine.

Today's Birthdays:
Sir Robert Peel, English statesman (1788-1850)
John Lindley, English botanist (1799-1865)
William S Burroughs, US writer (1914-1997)
Andreas Papandreou, Greek prime minister (1919-1996)
Jennifer Jason Leigh, US actress (1962--)
Bobby Brown, US singer (1969--)