This day in history – November 5

• 1228 Wu MeKuan, a collection of 48 Zen koans, compiled in China.

• 1414 Council of Constance (16th ecumenical council) opens.

• 1492 Christopher Columbus learns of maize (corn) from Indians of Cuba.

• 1500 November 5 to 6 astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus observes a lunar eclipse in Rome.

• 1530 St Felix Flood ravages Dutch coast and destroys the city of Reimerswaal in the Netherlands.

• 1605 Gunpowder Plot: Catholic conspirator Guy Fawkes attempts to blow up King James I and the British Parliament. Plot discovered, Guy Fawkes caught, tortured and later executed along with seven others. Celebrated ever since as Guy Fawkes Day, where his effigy is traditionally burned on a bonfire, accompanied by fireworks.

• 1930 Nobel for literature awarded to Sinclair Lewis for “Babbitt”.

Film Awards

• 1930 3rd Academy Awards: “All Quiet on the Western Front”, George Arliss & Norma Shearerwin

• 1935 Parker Brothers launches game of Monopoly.

• 1937 Adolf Hitler informs his military leaders in a secret meeting of his intentions of going to war.

• 1943 Vatican in Rome bombed by unknown source.

• 1953 Nobel prize for physics awarded to Frederik Zernicke.

• 1955 Date returned to in “Back to the Future” by Marty McFly.

• 1979 Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini declares US “The Great Satan”.

• 1982 George Harrison releases “Gone Troppo” album.

• 1987 South Africa ANC-leader Govan Mbeki freed.

• 1995 André Dallaire attempts to assassinate Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien; he is thwarted when the PM’s wife locks the door.

• 1997 French court orders producer Jacques Charrier, ex-husband of Brigitte Bardot, to pay the former screen star $8 300 in damages.

• 2000 Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie is given an Imperial funeral by the Ethiopian Orthodox church.

• 2006 Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar are sentenced to death in the al-Dujail trial for the role in the massacre of the 148 Shi’as in 1982.

• 2012 50 Syrian military personnel are killed by a suicide car bomb in Hama.

• 2012 Widespread flooding in Nigeria kills 363 people and displaces 2.1 million.

• 2013 4 people are killed after a four-story building under construction collapses in Lagos, Nigeria.

• 2015 Collins Dictionary name “binge-watch” the word of the year, followed by “transgender”.

• 2015 Fundão dam in Brazil collapses, killing about 23, causing a second dam to fail, releasing a massive flood of mud down the Rio Dulce.

Source: www.onthisday.com