Today in History in 1759 George Washington marries Martha Dandridge Custis.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

January 5 is the fifth day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 360 days remaining until the end of the year (361 in leap years).

EVENTS

1066 – Edward the Confessor, King of England, dies. The resulting crisis leads to the Norman conquest of England later the same year.

1463 – Poet François Villon is banned from Paris.

1477 – Battle of Nancy: Charles the Bold is killed, Burgundy becomes part of France.

1500 – Duke Ludovico Sforza conquers Milan.

1527 – Martyrdom of Felix Manz, a Swiss Anabaptist.

1554 – Great fire in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

1675 – Battle of Colmar, French army beats Brandenburg.

1757 – Louis XV of France survives the assassination attempt by Robert-François Damiens, the last person to be executed in France with the traditional and gruesome form of death penalty used for regicides.

1759 – George Washington marries Martha Dandridge Custis.

1769 – James Watt patents his steam engine.

1781 – American Revolutionary War: Richmond, Virginia, is burned by British naval forces led by Benedict Arnold.

1813 – Denmark is declared bankrupt.

1846 – The United States House of Representatives votes to stop sharing the Oregon Territory with the United Kingdom.

1854 – The San Francisco steamer sinks, 300 dead.

1895 – Dreyfus Affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island.

1896 – An Austrian newspaper reports that Wilhelm Roentgen discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays.

1900 – Irish leader John Edward Redmond calls for a revolt against British rule.

1901–2000

1909 – Colombia recognizes the independence of Panama.

1913 – First Balkan War: During the Battle of Lemnos, Greek admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis forces the Turkish fleet to retreat to its base within the Dardanelles, from which it did not venture for the rest of the war.

1914 – Ford Motor Company announces an eight-hour workday and a minimum wage of $5 for a day's labor.

1919 – The German Workers' Party is founded. It later becomes the Nazi Party.

1925 – Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first female governor in the United States.

1933 – Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay.

1940 – FM radio is demonstrated to the FCC for the first time.

1944 – The Daily Mail becomes the first transoceanic newspaper.

1945 – The Soviet Union recognizes the new pro–Soviet government of Poland.

1948 – Warner Brothers shows the first color newsreel (Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl).

1949 – US President Harry S. Truman unveils his "Fair Deal" program.

1956 – Elvis Presley records "Heartbreak Hotel."

1957 – Major league baseballer Jackie Robinson retires.

1961 – Television: Mr. Ed debuts.

1964 – Pope Paul VI meets the Greek patriarch Athenagoras I in Jerusalem, the first meeting of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity leaders since 1439.

1968 – Alexander Dubček comes to power, "Prague Spring" begins in Czechoslovakia.

1970 – Soap opera All My Children premieres.

1971 – The first one–day international cricket match takes place between Australia and England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

1972 – President of the United States Richard Nixon orders the development of a space shuttle program.

1973 – Netherlands recognizes East Germany.

1974 – An earthquake in Lima, Peru, kills six, and damages hundreds of houses.

1974 – Warmest recorded temperature in Antarctica, at 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit).

1975 – The Tasman Bridge in Tasmania, Australia, is struck by the bulk ore carrier Lake Illawarra, killing twelve people.

1976 – Cambodia is renamed Democratic Kampuchea.

1980 – Hewlett-Packard announces release of its first personal computer.

1984 – Richard Stallman starts developing GNU.

1987 – US President Ronald Reagan undergoes prostate surgery causing worries about his health.

1991 – Georgian forces enter Tskhinvali, South Ossetia, beginning the 1991-1992 South Ossetia War.

1993 – The oil tanker MV Braer runs aground on the coast of the Shetland Islands spilling 84,700 tonnes of oil.

1993 – Washington state executes Westley Allan Dodd by hanging (the first legal hanging in America since 1965).

1996 – Hamas operative Yahya Ayyash is killed by an Israeli–planted booby–trapped cell phone.

1997 – Withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya.

2000 – The 1st day of the 2000 Al Qaeda Summit.

2002 – Charles Bishop, a 15–year–old student pilot, crashes a light aircraft into a Tampa, Florida building, evoking fear of a copycat 9/11 terrorist attack.

2005 – Scientists discover the dwarf planet Eris, near the edge of the Solar System.

2008 – Mikheil Saakashvili is re–elected as President of Georgia.

2012 – Portia Simpson-Miller becomes Prime Minister of Jamaica for a second time.

2015 – The Euro currency plunges to its lowest value in over nine years, while Asian stock markets also experience difficulties.